Optimized MPEG-4 animation encoder for motion capture data

Abstract

This paper presents first compression results on using the MPEG-4 BBA standard for encoding motion capture data. We first introduce a detailed description of the main compression mechanisms used in recently BBA standard: prediction, frequency transform, quantization and entropy encoder and discuss the theoretical range of encoding performances. Then we introduce an optimized BBA encoder including also a key-frame reduction mechanism and show the compression results on animation files from typical motion capture data-base. We compare the results with the ones reported in literature showing the advantages of the MPEG-4 BBA in terms of bit-rate, complexity and range control.