Gated Compression: An Application-Specific Technique for Achieving High Degrees of Video Compression

There exists a class of interesting video applications that generate large volumes of data, and for which existing video compression techniques alone do not reduce the data to a manageable amount. Examples of this type of application include a wide range of video monitoring applications which use stationary video cameras (e.g., facility security cameras, video monitoring of manufacturing processes, etc.). This paper presents a new compression technique for just such a class of video applications, that can provide compression ratios of on the order of 5000:1 and are realizable with extremely low implementation costs. This new technique, known as “gated compression,” works in conjunction with standard video compression techniques and provides an additional level of compression by suppressing (or “gating”) the compressed video stream. This technique involves the detection, in real-time, of when a newly compressed field of video does not differ significantly from the previously transmitted video field, and simply discarding the