"Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort." - John Ruskin
ZPEG’s Pre-Processor increases video compressibility, thereby reducing the cost of storage and delivery while maintaining an equal visual experience.
The Pre-Processor improves the quality of compression when used in conjunction with existing technologies (MPEG-2, AVC, HEVC, VP-9), and requires no change to the encoder or decoder.
ZPEG’s mainstream current product is a Pre-Processor that improves the quality of compression when used in conjunction with existing technologies (MPEG-2, AVC, HEVC, VP-9).
The equivalent viewing distance is specified in visiBels (vB), a logarithmic measure of perceptual distortion.
Perceptibility of stated compression advantages are reached by pre-processing 1080p HD content with a visiBel strength of -12 vB, well below the limit of visibility of such content at the viewing distance (-7 vB). Immersive 4K content is preprocessed at -18 vB.
ZPEG pre-processing does a better job of removing temporal redundancies than is possible with standards-based compression. ZPEG is implemented using a human visual model that supports per-asset optimization, and far lower bandwidths can be obtained without objectionable artifacts (blocking, stair-stepping, ghosting).
The ZPEG Pre-processor is an application of the Human Visual Model to decorrelated transform space – the basic concept underlying ZPEG’s patent portfolio. The decorrelated transform domain supports theoretically ideal removal of imperceptible visual data. ZPEG’s Human Visual Model goes a step further by calibrating the model to a specified viewing distance, enabling the removal of all imperceptible data from the video stream at a desired visual quality.
A legacy compressor then processes a video stream that has been cleaned by removing imperceptible video content. The resulting content appears to be clearer than competing designs, resulting in a smaller representation of each frame.
While there is no theory governing the removal of error between frames, the ZPEG pre-processor is able to perform the removal in advance, following a well-defined theoretical model that guarantees optimality for a specified quality.