So, as it happens to me sometimes, I’ve looked at some random codec before fixing myself a breakfast.
What do we have here?
- 8×8 DCT
- lots of static VLCs (not as much as Real codecs have though)
- several coding modes — 4:2:2, 4:4:4, both with alpha or not
- block-level interlacing
Macroblock consists of 4 luma blocks, 4 or 8 chroma blocks and optionally 4 alpha blocks. In the latter case not all blocks might be coded and CBP is present.
There are separate VLC tables for DC depending on bit depth (10, 11 or 12 bits per component) and for quantised ACs (for quantisers 0-7, 8-15, 16-31, 32-63, 64-127 and the rest).
The only interesting scheme is quantiser selection: there is a table with predefined quantiser quadruplets. Every macroblock can select any quadruplet and every block can use any quantiser from it.
Oh, and I think codec’s name was Canopus HQX.