Patent ID: 8259793

Claim:
A method of performing rapid quantization of discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients during picture encoding in a video stream, comprising: performing an off-line training process in which extreme video macroblocks (MBs) are differentiated from normal video MBs based on a prediction cost comparison, with prediction costs recorded as a quantization parameter (QP) threshold, and the off-line training process resulting in determining a final quantization parameter (QP) threshold; wherein video macroblocks are considered to be extreme video macroblocks (MBs) if their cost exceeds a given cost threshold; performing a real-time control process wherein DCT coefficients are quantized for both normal video MBs and extreme video MBs, including an adaptation of quantization scale, or coefficient truncation, for extreme MBs; generating a set of scaled DCT coefficient quantization tables at the beginning of encoding each picture; and skipping quantization for any DCT coefficients which are expected to zero-out based on a dynamic skipping threshold.