Patent ID: 8155184

Claim:
A method of efficiently coding a high-resolution video sequence, comprising: spatial downsampling of a high-resolution video sequence received as input to obtain downsampled video having a lower spatial resolution video signal; coding of a base-layer of said downsampled video utilizing conventional video coding; performing texture analysis of said downsampled video into texture blocks (T blocks) upon which texture synthesis can be performed, and non-texture blocks (NT blocks) upon which alternate non-textural coding is to be performed; performing texture classification of T blocks into various categories varying from highly rigid to non-rigid so that effective synthesis techniques can be performed dependent upon the classification; obtaining structural information from said base-layer; performing texture synthesis in response to said structural information; performing texture quality assessment of texture blocks to classify visual acceptability of synthesized areas as acceptable, non-acceptable and marginally non-acceptable; wherein determining of acceptably synthesized blocks is performed by quality assessor programming which utilizes iterative processing of the texture classification and texture synthesis toward bringing marginally non-acceptable blocks up to an acceptable level of visual quality; coding an enhancement-layer in response to structure analysis of the base-layer for acceptably synthesized blocks and using said alternate non-textural coding for unacceptably synthesized blocks; and outputting at least one bit stream containing the coded base-layer and the enhancement-layer; wherein said alternate non-textural coding comprises: (a) determining that a block is an intra-coded non-texture block, wherein the base-layer block is decoded, up-sampled, and a residual computed using the original input high-definition video signal; and (b) determining that a block is an inter-coded non-texture block, wherein the motion vector information (my) from the base-layer is up-sampled, and (i) for an my in a non-synthesized region in the reference frame of the enhancement-layer, a refinement for my is calculated, after which residual and refinement my are coded, or (ii) for an my in a synthesized region of the reference frame of the enhancement-layer, the synthesized reference block is replaced with the current block, or (iii) for an mv in a synthesized region of the reference frame of the enhancement-layer, a base-layer inter block is decoded, the downsampled video is up-sampled, and the residual from the enhancement-layer video is coded through at least one decoder.