Image transformation coding device with adaptive quantization characteristic selection

Claim 1

A transformation coding device comprising: a movement compensating unit which divides a digital image input signal series into a plurality of blocks, and thereafter compares respective blocks with corresponding preceding frame image signals located at the same spatial positions or in the vicinity of said position, detects the most similar portions of said blocks from among said preceding frame image signals, and outputs a spatial amount of displacement between said blocks and the similar portions of said preceding frame image signals as a motion vector; a subtractor which subtracts a prediction signal between movement compensating frames produced in accordance with said motion vector from said digital image input signal and a generates difference signal corresponding to the result of said subtraction; an orthogonal transformation unit which applies orthogonal transformation to said difference signal and outputs a transformation coefficient; an adaptive quantization unit which selects one quantization characteristic from among a plurality of predetermined quantization characteristics in accordance with both the degree of similarity of the prediction signal between movement compensating frames for said block digital image signal series and a sequence of said transformation coefficient and applies quantization to said transformation coefficient according to the selected quantization characteristic; an adaptive quantization decoding unit which selects one quantization characteristic from among a plurality of predetermined quantization characteristics corresponding to both the degree of similarity of the prediction signal between movement compensating frames and the sequence of said transformation coefficient, and applies quantization decoding to the quantized transformation coefficient from said adaptive quantization unit; an inverse orthogonal transformation unit which applies inverse orthogonal transformation to the quantization decoded transformation coefficient to produce a difference signal between decoded frames; an adder which adds said difference signal between decoded frames and said prediction signal between movement compensating frames to produce a decoded image signal; a frame memory which stores said decoded image signal temporarily to output said prediction signal between movement compensating frames in accordance with said motion vector; a variable length coding unit which applies variable length coding to said quantized transformation coefficient and outputs the result as coded data; and a transmitting buffer which stores said coded data temporarily, outputs them with a fixed bit rate, and at the same time, outputs an amount of buffer data storage as a feedback signal to said adaptive quantization unit in order to prevent buffer overflow.