Issues in Reduced-Resolution Decoding of MPEG Video

Given a high resolution compressed video, we investigate the problem of simplifying the memory and computational requirements of the decoder, when the intended playback resolution is less than the encoded resolution. We show that significant savings can be obtained, in the amount of temporary storage space used, memory bandwidth between the processor and local memory and raw computational complexity, while not incurring a significant loss in perceptual quality. Most video compression standards make special adjustments to deal with interlaced video. We explore how the proposed solution adapts to these situations and suggest modifications which improve the quality of the reconstructed video. Results from using these algorithms on a number of test sequences compressed with the MPEG-2 standard are presented.