Fast Scalable Coding based on a 3D Low Bit Rate Fractal Video Encoder

Video transmissions usually occur at a fixed or at a small number of predefined bit rates. This can lead to several problems in communication channels whose bandwidth can vary along time (e.g. wireless devices). This work proposes a video encoding method for solving such problems through a fine rate control that can be dynamically adjusted with low overhead. The encoder uses fractal compression and a simple rate distortion heuristic to preprocess the content in order to speed up the process of switching between different bit rates. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can accurately transcode a preprocessed video sequence into a large range of bit rates with a small computational overhead.