Design of adaptive and nonadaptive quantizers using subjective criteria

Several properties of visual masking have been investigated with a view to their application to adaptive quantization in DPCM-coding. Quantization characteristics for adaptive and nonadaptive quantizers have been designed using subjective criteria. Special stress has been laid on fixing the changeover levels of an adaptive quantizer. A comparison test involving various quantizing strategies demonstrated the efficiency of the developed techniques. Especially with regard to adaptive quantization with 11 levels (3.5 bits) per picture element, which is suitable for the transmission of broad-band TV-signals with 34 Mbits/s, an improvement on comparable methods could be demonstrated.