Peirong Ning

Wei Jiang, Jiayu Yang, Yongqi Zhai et al.

Recently, learned image compression has achieved remarkable performance. The entropy model, which estimates the distribution of the latent representation, plays a crucial role in boosting rate-distortion performance. However, most entropy models only capture correlations in one dimension, while the latent representation contain channel-wise, local spatial, and global spatial correlations. To tackle this issue, we propose the Multi-Reference Entropy Model (MEM) and the advanced version, MEM$^+$. These models capture the different types of correlations present in latent representation. Specifically, We first divide the latent representation into slices. When decoding the current slice, we use previously decoded slices as context and employ the attention map of the previously decoded slice to predict global correlations in the current slice. To capture local contexts, we introduce two enhanced checkerboard context capturing techniques that avoids performance degradation. Based on MEM and MEM$^+$, we propose image compression models MLIC and MLIC$^+$. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that our MLIC and MLIC$^+$ models achieve state-of-the-art performance, reducing BD-rate by $8.05\%$ and $11.39\%$ on the Kodak dataset compared to VTM-17.0 when measured in PSNR. Our code is available at https://github.com/JiangWeibeta/MLIC.

Shibo Yin, Zhiyu Zhang, Peirong Ning et al.

In streaming media services, video transcoding is a common practice to alleviate bandwidth demands. Unfortunately, traditional methods employing a uniform rate factor (RF) across all videos often result in significant inefficiencies. Content-adaptive encoding (CAE) techniques address this by dynamically adjusting encoding parameters based on video content characteristics. However, existing CAE methods are often tightly coupled with specific encoding strategies, leading to inflexibility. In this paper, we propose a model that predicts both RF-quality and RF-bitrate curves, which can be utilized to derive a comprehensive bitrate-quality curve. This approach facilitates flexible adjustments to the encoding strategy without necessitating model retraining. The model leverages codec features, content features, and anchor features to predict the bitrate-quality curve accurately. Additionally, we introduce an anchor suspension method to enhance prediction accuracy. Experiments confirm that the actual quality metric (VMAF) of the compressed video stays within 1 of the target, achieving an accuracy of 99.14%. By incorporating our quality improvement strategy with the rate-quality curve prediction model, we conducted online A/B tests, obtaining both +0.107% improvements in video views and video completions and +0.064% app duration time. Our model has been deployed on the Xiaohongshu App.

Wei Jiang, Peirong Ning, Jiayu Yang et al.

The effective receptive field (ERF) plays an important role in transform coding, which determines how much redundancy can be removed during transform and how many spatial priors can be utilized to synthesize textures during inverse transform. Existing methods rely on stacks of small kernels, whose ERFs remain insufficiently large, or heavy non-local attention mechanisms, which limit the potential of high-resolution image coding. To tackle this issue, we propose Large Receptive Field Transform Coding with Adaptive Weights for Learned Image Compression (LLIC). Specifically, for the first time in the learned image compression community, we introduce a few large kernelbased depth-wise convolutions to reduce more redundancy while maintaining modest complexity. Due to the wide range of image diversity, we further propose a mechanism to augment convolution adaptability through the self-conditioned generation of weights. The large kernels cooperate with non-linear embedding and gate mechanisms for better expressiveness and lighter pointwise interactions. Our investigation extends to refined training methods that unlock the full potential of these large kernels. Moreover, to promote more dynamic inter-channel interactions, we introduce an adaptive channel-wise bit allocation strategy that autonomously generates channel importance factors in a self-conditioned manner. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed transform coding, we align the entropy model to compare with existing transform methods and obtain models LLIC-STF, LLIC-ELIC, and LLIC-TCM. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed LLIC models have significant improvements over the corresponding baselines and reduce the BD-Rate by 9.49%, 9.47%, 10.94% on Kodak over VTM-17.0 Intra, respectively. Our LLIC models achieve state-of-the-art performances and better trade-offs between performance and complexity.

Peirong Ning, Wei Jiang, Ronggang Wang

In recent years, there has been rapid development in learned image compression techniques that prioritize ratedistortion-perceptual compression, preserving fine details even at lower bit-rates. However, current learning-based image compression methods often sacrifice human-friendly compression and require long decoding times. In this paper, we propose enhancements to the backbone network and loss function of existing image compression model, focusing on improving human perception and efficiency. Our proposed approach achieves competitive subjective results compared to state-of-the-art end-to-end learned image compression methods and classic methods, while requiring less decoding time and offering human-friendly compression. Through empirical evaluation, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method in achieving outstanding performance, with more than 25% bit-rate saving at the same subjective quality.