
This is the first release of MC-EZBC, intended for MPEG members who would
like to explore the capabilities of our coder, and take a look at the
implementation details of this EZBC image/video coding system. Since the 
algorithm is still under research, not much of an attempt has been 
made to optimize these programs for reducing computational
complexity or memory useage. The image codec ezbc0a/ezbc_dec0a and 
the video codec are based on the results reported in [1] and [2], respectively. 
The implementation of MC temporal filtering is based on [3].  Some
further improvements were devised by P. Chen and J. W. Woods for the
digital cinema application and are present in submitted papers to ICIP 2002.

This distribution includes routines copyrighted and/or patented
by several other researchers:

 -- Directory TempSub includes several (modified) routines from "MC3D-SBC" of
    S.-J. Choi and Woods [4], and some functions from library "basic" 
    written by S.-C. Han.

 -- Directory Utils includes several programs from SPIHT [5],
    patented by A. Said and W. Pearlman.  US patent no. 5,764,807

 -- Directories 3dCodec and EZBC have some codes from SPIHT and EBCOT
    (D. Taubman [6]).

These programs may not be used in any commercial product nor 
may they be re-engineered for use in any commercial product.
Permission is granted for use of these programs only for activities
within MPEG. 


References

[1] Shih-Ta Hsiang and J. W. Woods,"Embedded image coding using zeroblocks
    of subband/wavelet coefficients and context modeling," MPEG-4 Workshop
    and Exhibition at ISCAS 2000, Geneva, Switzerland, May 2000.

[2] Shih-Ta Hsiang and J. W. Woods, "Embedded video coding using motion
    compensated 3-D subband/wavelet filter bank," Packet Video Workshop ,
    Sardinia, Italy, May 2000. 

[3] Shih-Ta Hsiang and J. W. Woods, "Invertible three-dimensional
    analysis/synthesis system for video coding with half-pixel-accurate 
    motion compensation," to be published, Proc. SPIE 3653, Visual 
    Communications and Image Processing'99, Jan. 1999.

{4] S.-J. Choi and J.W. Woods, "Motion-compensated 3-D subband coding of
    video," IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 8,
    no. 2, pp. 155-167, Feb. 1999. Souce codes available as
    http://www.cipr.rpi.edu/students/choi/MC3Dtar.gz

[5] A. Said and W. A. Pearlman, "A New and Efficient Image Codec Based
    on Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees," IEEE Transactions on
    Circuits and Systems for Video Tech., June 1996. 

[6] D. Taubman, "High performance scalable image compression with EBCOT,"
    IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 9, no. 7 , July 2000. 

[7] A. Islam and W. A. Pearlman, "An Embedded and Efficient Low-Complexity
    Hierarchical Image Coder,"  Visual Communications and Image Processing
    '99, Proceedings of SPIE, Vol. 3653, pp. 294-305, 1999. 


Thank you for your interest in trying out our codec.  If encounter problems,
your best bet is to contact Peisong Chen at chenp2@rpi.edu .  Alternatively
you can contact me at woods@ecse.rpi.edu .



John Woods

-----------------------------------
John W. Woods
Center for Next Generation Video
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA
email: woods@ecse.rpi.edu
