1 The Smoke Codec

     2 ---------------

     3 

     4 This is a very simple compression algorithm I was toying with when doing a

     5 Java based player. Decoding a JPEG in Java has acceptable speed so this codec

     6 tries to exploit that feature. The algorithm first compares the last and the 

     7 new image and finds all 16x16 blocks that have a squared difference bigger than

     8 a configurable threshold. Then all these blocks are compressed into an NxM JPEG.

     9 The quality of the JPEG is inversely proportional to the number of blocks, this

    10 way, the picture quality degrades with heavy motion scenes but the bitrate stays

    11 more or less constant.

    12 Decoding decompresses the JPEG and then updates the old picture with the new

    13 blocks.

    14 

    15 

    16 TODO:

    17 ----

    18 - make format extensible

    19 - motion vectors

    20 - do some real bitrate control