The influence of motion on the masking of quantization errors in three-dimensional DPCM-coding

Abstract Masking effects in DPCM-coding of TV-sequences have been studied with special regard to moving objects. Compared to coding of static pictures two new distortion effects were observed that will be described in detail. Subjective comparison tests were performed to derive masking functions for the construction of quantizers that allow quantization with no visible degradation. Test sequences were used that can be regarded as worst case situations for three-dimensional prediction in case of motion. It will be demonstrated that a three-dimensional predictor with fixed coefficients gives no improvement compared to two-dimensional prediction if the sequence contains moving high-contrasted objects with different velocities.