Public Source Code Release of Matching Pursuit Video Codec

The Matching Pursuit Experimental Video Codec is based on the motion-transform hybrid video coding framework commonly employed in standard based system such as H.263 and MPEG2. Matching pursuit (MP) is an over-complete expansion technique that can be used in place of the DCT for prediction error coding after motion compensation. Interested readers are referred to [1] for more information on the background of MP video coding. Extension of MP to scalable coding and shape-texture coding can be found in [2] while the latest results for rectangular frame coding is presented in [3].

A free experimental MP software codec is provided by the Video and Image Processing (VIP) Laboratory in University of California at Berkeley. The version history of the codec is shown below:

Version 1 (released on October 18, 1998)
Version 2 (released on January 25, 1999)

Click here to download the latest version of the codec.

The objective of making this package freely available is to stimulate further research activities in the area of MP video coding. Thus, our programs are geared towards clarity and are not fully optimized. The skeleton of the programs is based on the freely available H.263 TMN coder version 2.0 from Telenor R&D. This package includes both an encoder and a decoder. The encoder can take QCIF, CIF or SIF size yuv-concatenated sequences as input. It supports simple scene-change detection and various kinds of simple rate control. The package has been tested on Solaris 2.5.1, HP-UX 10.01, Window 95 and Window NT systems.

This software is in part covered by U.S. Patent No. 5,699,121, issued Dec. 16, 1997. For more information and bug reports, please contact Professor Zakhor (avz@eecs.berkeley.edu).

1. R. Neff and A. Zakhor, "Very Low Bit-Rate Video Coding based on Matching Pursuits," IEEE Trans. on CSVT, Oct. 97. Vol. 7, No. 5, pp.158-171.
2. O. Al-Shaykh, E. Miloskavsky, T. Nomura, R. Neff and A. Zakhor, "Video Compression using Matching Pursuits," accepted for publication in IEEE Trans. on CSVT, Oct. 1998.
3. S. Cheung, R. Neff and A. Zakhor, "Changes regarding Matching Pursuits in Visual VM V.11," MPEG 98/M3832, July 1998.