Kostya's Boring Codec World

Chroma block coding is similar to luma but with some changes since there are only 4 blocks coded here.

Thus, CBP is coded as two nibbles (real CBP and VLC switch) and it does not try to reuse nibbles from last CBP in code.

There are only 4 DCs here but they are decoded the same way.

AC block decoding is completely the same.

Intra luma block in Bink2 contains the following elements: CBP, quantiser, DCs and ACs.

CBP is coded as 32-bit bitmask depending on the previous CBP value. Internally top half is coded depending on bottom one and the whole bitmask is coded in nibbles starting from LSB.
Lower half decoding depends on the control bits:

• 11 — simply return last CBP
• 10 — use low 16 bit from last CBP
• 0 — decode 4 low nibbles of CBP. Initial nibble value is set to (last_cbp >> 4) & 0xF, if the next bit is 1 then don’t change it, otherwise read new value from the bitstream (4 bits of course).

Now we can use these low 16 bits of CBP to restore high 16 bits. This is also done by nibbles and decoding depends on them (why nibbles? Because blocks are coded in groups of four).


pat4 = (last_cbp >> 20) & 0xF;
ref = cbp;
for (i = 0; i < 4; i++) {   if (!ones_count[ref & 0xF]) {    pat4 = 0;   } else if (ones_count[ref & 0xF] || getbit()) {    pat4 = 0;    for (bit = 1; bit < 0x10; bit <<= 1)     if ((ref & bit) && getbit())      pat4 |= bit;   } else {    pat4 &= ref & 0xF;   }   cbp |= pat4 << 16 + i * 4;   ref >>= 4
}


Essentially it decides what set bits to copy from the first part. And top 16 bits are not really a coded block pattern, it just tells decoder to use an alternative set of VLC codes in AC decoding.

Quantiser is coded with static VLC (plus sign bit for nonzero value) as a difference to the previous quantiser.

Quantisation table for DC: 4 4 4 4 4 6 7 8 10 12 16 24 32 48 64 128

16 DCs (coded with the same scheme as motion vector described in the previous post)

16 blocks of AC coefficients coded in groups of four. Each AC block is coded as (value, skip) pair where value is coded with static VLC that gives small levels (0-3) or number of bits for raw value to read. Skips have one peculiarity too: value coded with static VLC defines either skip (for values 0-10), escape value (when you got you need to read 6 bits with real skip value), end of block value and that the following 8 AC coefficients won’t have skip values coded after them.

Scan order is strange, here are first 8 indices from it: 0, 2, 1, 8, 9, 17, 10, 16, 24, 3, 18, 25, 32, 11, 33

Frames consist of ordinary macroblocks in 420 format with optional alpha. Bitstream is packed into 32-bit little-endian words.

Every macroblock is prefixed by 2-bit code determining its type.

Type 0 (intra block). Decode intra block.

Type 1 (skip block). Simply skip block.

Type 2 (motion block). Decode motion vectors and copy block with ½-pel precision for luma and alpha and ¼-pel precision for chroma. There is no residue coding.

Type 3 (inter block). Decode motion vectors and copy block with ½-pel precision for luma and alpha and ¼-pel precision for chroma. Now decode and add residue.

Motion vector differences are coded this way: motion vector element size in bits (3 bits, if read value is 7 then read additional 2 bits, so total is up to 7+3=10 bits per MV element); four motion vector elements; sign bits for non-zero motion vector elements.

Side note: looks like this codec employs this scheme (bit size in 3+2 scheme, fixed-size values, signs for nonzero values) for other elements too, e.g. DCs.

Luma hpel filter looks something like (A - 4*B + 19*C - 4*D + E + 1) >> 5
Chroma qpel: ¼ — (6*A + 2*B + 1) >> 3, ½ — (A + B + 1) >> 1

Next: intra macroblock decoding — luma.

Since I obviously have nothing better to do with my time I looked at Bink2 again. In the (hopefully) following blog posts I’ll try to document bitstream format; general codec design was presented much earlier.

At least container format remains the same (except that it uses e.g. KB2f or KB2g instead of BIKi).