Saving Bits—The Impact of MCTF Enhanced Noise Reduction

Motion Compensated Temporal Filtering (MCTF) has made a significant impact on the DTV industry by saving bits and allowing operators to deliver consistently higher quality video at lower rates than ever before. All content tends to contain some noise, the random and unwanted portion of a signal. Even modern facilities equipped with the latest digital production equipment will inevitably import noisy content unless the incoming material is thoroughly cleaned. Noise reduction (NR) and filtering can substantially improve the video received by a viewer if the right techniques are applied to remove noise prior to compression. Selectively removing noise is a challenge because it shares space with valuable picture detail. An ideal noise reduction process will allow powerful suppression of random noise while preserving clean video content. The major advantage of MCTF is its inherent ability to remove noise without introducing motion blur artifacts. This technique has been known for many years, but the costs associated with a high processing overhead has kept it from being commercially viable. This paper will explain how integration of the new MCTF technique with existing technologies has dramatically improved video-compression efficiency.

Print ISSN

0036-1682

Published

2002-01

Content type

Information

DOI

10.5594/J16412