Using numbers of non-zero quantized transform signals and signal differences to determine when to encode video signals using inter-frame or intra-frame encoding

摘要

A transform is applied to a region of a current video frame to generate transform signals corresponding to the region. An activity measure is generated using the transform signals. The activity measure is then used to determine whether to encode the region as a skipped region. The region is encoded in accordance with that determination to generate an encoded bit stream for the region. In a preferred embodiment, the transform signals are DCT coefficients and the activity measure is a weighted sum of the DCT coefficients, where the weighting of the low-frequency DCT coefficients is greater than the weighting of the high-frequency DCT coefficients. The region is encoded as a skipped region if the activity measure is less than a threshold value; otherwise, the region is encoded as either an inter encoded region or an intra encoded region.