1. IT 342 : Fundamentals of Multimedia
Tutorial # 4
IT 342 : Fundamentals of Multimedia

2. Q: My old SoundBlaster card is an 8–bit card.
What is it 8 bits of?
What is the best SQNR (Signal to Quantization Noise Ratio) it can achieve?

3. Quantization levels (not sampling frequency)
Answer :
Quantization levels (not sampling frequency)
Best SQNR is 1 level out of 256 possible levels.
Calculate SQNR using largest value in dynamic range:
SQNR= 20 log_10 (255/2ˆ0 )
˜= 20 log 2ˆ8
= 20*8*log 2
˜= 20*8* 0.3
= 48 db (actually, db)

4. IT 342 : Fundamentals of Multimedia
Tutorial # 5
IT 342 : Fundamentals of Multimedia

5. Q 1: Thinking about my large collection of JPEG images (of my family taken in various locales), I decide to unify them and make them more accessible by simply combining them into a big H.261-compressed file. My reasoning is that I can simply use a viewer to step through the file, making a cohesive whole out of my collection.
Comment on the utility of this idea, in terms of the compression ratio achievable for the set of images.

6. Answer :
This will not achieve a good compression, since no temporal redundancy is available. And it may be worse, since extra header information is required.

7. Q 2: In block-based video coding, what takes more effort: compression or decompression? Briefly explain Why .

8. Answer :
Compression. The encoder needs to do Motion Compensation (generate the motion vectors) which is time-consuming.

9. Q 3: As we know, MPEG video compression uses I-, P-, and B-frames
Q 3: As we know, MPEG video compression uses I-, P-, and B-frames. However, the earlier H.261 standard does not use B-frames. Describe a situation in which video compression would not be as effective without B-frames. (Your answer should be different from the one in Fig )

10. Answer :
Besides occlusion, the following could also call for bi-directional search: lighting (color and/or intensity) changes, changing views of 3D shape and/or texture, etc.

11. Q 4: Suggest an explanation for the reason the default quantization table Q2 for inter-frames is all constant, as opposed to the default quantization table Q1 of intra- frames.

13. Answer :
Intra-frames (I-frames) are basically coded as images. As in JPEG, larger values are used in the lower right part of Q1. As a result, a better compression can be achieved by introducing more losses to higher spatial frequency components.
For Inter-frames, it is the difference image (not the video frame itself) that is transform coded and quantized. So the reason for using non-constants in Q2 is not as compelling. Indeed, it can be argued that the high-frequency changes in the difference image are as important as the low-frequency ones.