Palette Color Index Partitioning for Low-Bit Video Compression

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing video compression standards struggle to efficiently represent blocks with a few colors, particularly in computer-generated content, leading to inefficiencies in bandwidth usage.

Innovation Solution

Implementing palette mode encoding and decoding techniques that utilize identity flags and context-based arithmetic coding to reduce the number of bits required for representing color indices, allowing for more efficient compression of video data.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Productivity

If palette mode is used to represent blocks with few colors, then compression efficiency is improved, but the number of bits required to represent color indices increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecompression efficiencyVSAvoidnumber of bits

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSQuantity of substance

Solution Approach 1:

The video frame is divided into multiple blocks, and each block is further divided into regions for applying palette mode. This segmentation allows the identity flag mechanism to be applied at the block level, enabling efficient representation of uniform color regions while maintaining overall compression efficiency.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces an identity flag parameter that changes the encoding approach: when set to true, only a single color index is signaled for the entire block instead of multiple indices. This parameter change allows the system to adapt between detailed representation and highly compressed representation based on block characteristics.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

2Quantity of substance

If context-based arithmetic coding is applied to identity flags, then the number of bits for color indices is reduced, but the complexity of the encoding process increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvenumber of bitsVSAvoidencoding complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Quantity of substanceVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The arithmetic coding process uses feedback from previously decoded identity flags and color indices to dynamically adjust the probability model. The context is updated based on previously signaled information, allowing the encoder to adapt to local patterns and achieve better compression while the decoder mirrors this process to maintain synchronization.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Solution Approach 2:

The patent pre-defines multiple contexts (e.g., context 0, context 1, context 2) that can be selected based on previously decoded information. This preliminary setup of contexts allows the system to quickly switch between different probability models without complex real-time calculations, reducing the actual encoding complexity while maintaining effectiveness.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS20250379982A1Representing color indices by use of constant partitions

Publication Date: 2025.12.11 CISCO TECHNOLOGY INC

AI summary

Presented herein are a variety of palette mode encoding and decoding techniques that can achieve further compression benefits. The techniques can be generalized to use arbitrary block partitions instead of rows, for instance columns of identical indices, or quadrants of identical indices.