Low-Bitrate Video Quality Enhancement by Frame Rate Up-Conversion and Adaptive Frame Encoding

Frame rate up-conversion (FRUC) is a useful technique for a lot of practical applications, such as display format conversion, low bitrate video coding and slow motion playback. Unlike traditional approaches, such as frame repetition or linear frame interpolation, motion-compensated frame interpolation (MCFI) technique which takes block motion into account is regarded as a more efficient scheme. By considering the deficiencies in previous works, new criteria and coding schemes for improving motion derivation and interpolation processes are suggested. We then integrate the proposed MCFI scheme into the decoding process of the latest coding standard, H.264/AVC. In addition, adaptive frame skip is fulfilled at the encoder side to maximize the power of MCFI in video coding applications. As a result, the encoder can adopt the MCFI dynamically and can decide whether the input frame should be coded or dropped then interpolated. Experimental results show that our proposal indeed enhances the overall quality, both subjectively and objectively, especially for the low bitrate video coding.