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61 lines
2.1 KiB
61 lines
2.1 KiB
A Quick Description Of Rate Distortion Theory. |
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We want to encode a video, picture or piece of music optimally. What does |
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"optimally" really mean? It means that we want to get the best quality at a |
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given filesize OR we want to get the smallest filesize at a given quality |
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(in practice, these 2 goals are usually the same). |
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Solving this directly is not practical; trying all byte sequences 1 |
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megabyte in length and selecting the "best looking" sequence will yield |
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256^1000000 cases to try. |
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But first, a word about quality, which is also called distortion. |
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Distortion can be quantified by almost any quality measurement one chooses. |
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Commonly, the sum of squared differences is used but more complex methods |
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that consider psychovisual effects can be used as well. It makes no |
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difference in this discussion. |
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First step: that rate distortion factor called lambda... |
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Let's consider the problem of minimizing: |
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distortion + lambda*rate |
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rate is the filesize |
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distortion is the quality |
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lambda is a fixed value chosen as a tradeoff between quality and filesize |
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Is this equivalent to finding the best quality for a given max |
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filesize? The answer is yes. For each filesize limit there is some lambda |
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factor for which minimizing above will get you the best quality (using your |
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chosen quality measurement) at the desired (or lower) filesize. |
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Second step: splitting the problem. |
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Directly splitting the problem of finding the best quality at a given |
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filesize is hard because we do not know how many bits from the total |
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filesize should be allocated to each of the subproblems. But the formula |
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from above: |
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distortion + lambda*rate |
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can be trivially split. Consider: |
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(distortion0 + distortion1) + lambda*(rate0 + rate1) |
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This creates a problem made of 2 independent subproblems. The subproblems |
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might be 2 16x16 macroblocks in a frame of 32x16 size. To minimize: |
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(distortion0 + distortion1) + lambda*(rate0 + rate1) |
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we just have to minimize: |
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distortion0 + lambda*rate0 |
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and |
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distortion1 + lambda*rate1 |
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I.e, the 2 problems can be solved independently. |
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Author: Michael Niedermayer |
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Copyright: LGPL
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