Method and system for low complexity transcoding of images with near optimal quality

A system having a processor and a computer readable storage medium, for transcoding of an input image into an output image for display on a terminal, the system comprising:

• (a24) a Training Image Repository stored in the computer readable medium, comprising a training image set T including training images;
• (b24) an Off-Line Data-Set Generator comprising computer readable instructions stored in the computer readable storage medium, generating a data-set prior to the transcoding of the input image, the data-set comprising transcoding parameters generated by an optimal quality transcoding of a set of the training images from the training image set T, producing a highest quality transcoded training image for each training image, while satisfying characteristics of the terminal;
• (c24) a Data-Set Repository stored in a computer readable storage medium, storing the data-set produced by the Off-Line Data-Set Generator (b24);
• and
• (d24) an On-Line Transcoder, comprising computer readable instructions stored in a computer readable storage medium selecting the transcoding parameters from the data-set stored in the Data-Set Repository (c24), by using the characteristics of the terminal and the features of the input image, and transcoding the input image into the output image by using the selected transcoding parameters.

A system having a plurality of computing nodes connected by a communication network, each node comprising a processor and a computer readable storage medium, for transcoding of an input image into an output image for display on a terminal, the system comprising:

• (a36) a Training Image Repository comprising a training image set T including training images stored in the computer readable storage medium of a first node;
• (b36) an Off-Line Data-Set Generator comprising computer readable instructions stored in a computer readable medium of a second node for generating a data-set prior to the transcoding of the input image, the data-set comprising transcoding parameters generated by an optimal quality transcoding of a set of the training images from the training image set T, producing a highest quality transcoded training image for each training image, while satisfying characteristics of the terminal;
• (c36) a Data-Set Repository, storing the data-set produced by the Off-Line Data-Set Generator (b36) in a computer readable storage medium of a third node;
• and
• (d36) an On-Line Transcoder comprising computer readable instructions stored in a computer readable medium of a fourth node, for selecting the transcoding parameters from the data-set stored in the Data-Set Repository (c36), by using the terminal characteristics and the features of the input image, and transcoding the input image into the output image by using the selected transcoding parameters.