Deferred demosaicking: efficient first-person view drone video encoding

Abstract In the pursuit of effective real-time video transmission for First-Person View (FPV) drone systems, optimizing the encoding process is paramount. Traditional encoding methods, reliant on pre-encoding demosaicking, often fall short in balancing the trade-off between video quality and latency, essential for seamless real-time feedback. This work proposes a novel approach by deferring the demosaicking process to the decoder side, thereby encoding the rearranged Bayer pattern (RGGB) data directly. This deferment significantly reduces the input data size, to the tune of a threefold reduction, thereby achieving a more expeditious encoding process. The tailored encoder and decoder architecture ensures the accurate reconstruction of the full-color image on the decoder side. Through a comprehensive evaluation, leveraging a specialized video quality assessment framework designed for FPV drone footage, our findings illuminate the substantial benefits of our proposed method. Specifically, it achieves faster encoding times and reduced computational overhead, pivotal for low-latency applications. Furthermore, this study opens avenues for integrating advanced encoding techniques into commercial FPV drone systems, potentially enriching user experiences across various applications. Our research not only addresses a critical gap in real-time video transmission but also sets the stage for future exploration into optimizing encoding methodologies for the next generation of FPV drone technologies.