Inter-frame similarity based video transcoding

Abstract

Multimedia services over wireless networks were made popular by the arrival of smart handhelds. These devices bring heterogeneity to the wireless networks and to the content creation as the content cannot be delivered in its original format due to the difference in the capabilities of these handhelds. An intermediate stage of processing like transcoding is carried out before delivering multimedia content. Under certain scenarios, it is required to convert the content attributes such as bit rate, frame rate, etc. while still retaining the content format to cater to devices with varying capabilities. We propose an algorithm that prioritizes frames taking into account inter frame similarity to perform frame dropping. The priority value based frame dropping in turn aids in delivering better quality video. Our frame priority assignment algorithm is based on uniform distribution of dropped frames to minimize jitter and maximizing the distance between two consecutive dropped frames.