Patent ID: 8768087

Claim:
A method of compressing a sequence of N coefficients, N being a positive integer, by determining a cost-determined sequence of N indices represented by a corresponding cost-determined sequence of differences under a given quantization step size and a given size distribution, wherein a sequence of differences defines a corresponding sequence of N indices such that each difference in the sequence of differences is a digital number equaling an i th index value minus an (i−1) th index value, i being greater than 0 and less than N−1, the method comprising the steps of: (a) using the given quantization step size and the given size distribution to formulate a cost function for a plurality of possible sequences of differences, wherein for one possible sequence of differences the value of an index in the corresponding sequence of indices defined by the one possible sequence of differences is neither the value of the corresponding index resulting from quantizing the sequence of N coefficients using the given quantization step size nor the value of an immediately preceding index in the corresponding sequence of indices; (b) applying the cost function to each possible sequence in the plurality of possible sequences of differences to determine an associated cost; and (c) selecting the corresponding cost-determined sequence of differences from the plurality of possible sequences of differences based on the associated cost, and determining the cost-determined sequence of N indices from the corresponding cost-determined sequence of differences.