JPEG and MPEG Source Coding of Video Signals

Abstract

In state-of-the-art television a digitised video signal typically uses a net bit rate of 166 Mbit/s (cf. section 2.2). If this data rate were transmitted without being compressed, considerably more bandwidth would be required than for the present analogue procedure. That is why the use of data compression techniques is indispensable for the development of a digital transmission standard for television signals. As with audio signals, a mere redundancy reduction (cf. section 3.1) would only result in a small average compression factor. With the aid of an irrelevance reduction which takes into account the characteristics of the human visual system, rejecting all imperceptible image contents, considerably higher reduction factors can be attained (with no change in the subjective quality of the image). This decreases the bandwidth requirement far below that for analogue transmission of a similar quality, thus making this procedure commercially very interesting.