Video Compression

We describe a versatile, low cost, video movie making system for generating and displaying scientific graphics from remote supercomputers. The system makes video movies by single frame animation from the output of time dependent, numerical simulations typically done on supercomputers. The system uses extensive data compression to permit its use over wide area, as well as local area networks. The system demonstrates an easily used, elementary visualization capability for time dependent data in a heterogeneous, distributed computing envirooment.

Multimedia data is generally stored in compressed form in order to efficiently utilize the available storage facilities. Access to archives is dependent on our ability to browse compressed multimedia information-retrieval and tracking from coded video databases. In this paper, a novel visual search engine for video retrieval and tracking from compressed multimedia databases is proposed. The goal of the project is the implementation of a visual browser that operates in a distributed environment where users initiate video searches and retrieve relevant video information simultaneously from multiple video archives. Being presented with a query in the form of template images of objects, the system operates on the compressed video to find the images or video sequences where those objects are present and their positions in the image. Upon user's request, the system will decompress and display only the video sequences of interest.

In MPEG coding, there are three types of encoded pictures. Since these picture coding types have different importance of data content, the cell loss of each picture coding type affects the video quality differently in MPEG video transmission through ATM networks. This paper analyzed the per-session cell loss properties of MPEG video traffic in an ATM switching node in both the steady-state case and the transient case considering each picture type. In the analysis, a 3-state Markov modulated Bernoulli process (MMBP) is proposed as a traffic model for MPEG video which is tractable analytically. Numerical results revealed the influence of the picture transmission pattern on the cell loss properties of each picture coding type

A single-chip video codec with embedded display controller for videotelephony applications is described. It encodes and decodes simultaneously up to 30 CIF pictures per second according to video-conferencing recommendations H261, H263 (all five options), and H263+ (six additional options). The die area is 132 mm 2 in a 0.35-m technology, and the power consumption is 1.4 W. The chip uses a distributed dedicated multiprocessor architecture, where computation-intensive functions are done by dedicated hardware, and where picture quality or standard dependent parts are done in software on dedicated programmable processors. Main architectural choices are discussed, and emphasis is put on hardware/software partitioning and codesign.

In this paper, we present an original image quality metric for open-loop transcoding architectures based on frequency selective transmission. The proposed metric computes the normalized HVS-weighted mean squared error (NWMSE) between the reference digital video compressed bitstream, and its transcoded version. This computation is performed directly from the quantized DCT coefficients of the compressed bitstream. The resulting MSE error is implicitly weighted by the HVS sensitivity by considering the MPEG perceptual coding properties. Finally, rate control and error propagation are also taken into account, in order to improve transcoded video quality assessment. Experimental results are given which show that the proposed NWMSE metric correlates well with a conventional WPSNR. This validates the proposed assumptions used for the NWMSE computation. The major advantage of the approach is its simplicity since it does not need to perform the complete decoding of the compressed bitstream. Hence, the NWMSE metric is highly suited for real-time video applications.

In this work, we propose carrying out tests on the encoding sequence of a video sequence to improve data flow and average PSNR. We experiment with the choice of reference images, in the process of video compression, by using only the intra and predicted images extracted from sequences. For each intra and predicted image, we perform edge detection. Each image of the sequence is compared with the other images by subtracting corresponding edges. The choice of the reference image is based on the result of subtraction. We adopt the criterion of minimum pixels if the resulting images present only points and the criterion of minimum distance between the lines if they present parallel lines and possibly points. Testing this approach on News and Kiss cool video sequences revealed an improvement in data flow and average PSNR as compared to the original encoding and choosing reference images based on the mean square error.

In this paper, we present an efficient real-time implementation technique for Motion-JPEG2000 video compression and its reconstruction used for a real-time Airborne Video Telemetry System. we utilize Motion JPEG2000 and 256-channel PCM Encoder was used for source coding in the developed system. Especially, in multiplexing and demultiplexing PCM encoded data, we use the continuous bit-stream format of the PCM encoded data so that any de-commutator can use it directly, after demultiplexing. Experimental results show that our proposed technique is a practical and an efficient DSP solution.

We develop a new filter which combines spatially adaptive noise filtering in the wavelet domain and temporal filtering in the signal domain. For spatial filtering, we propose a new wavelet shrinkage method, which estimates how probable it is that a wavelet coefficient represents a "signal of interest" given its value, given the locally averaged coefficient magnitude and given the global subband statistics. The temporal filter combines a motion detector and recursive time-averaging. The results show that this combination outperforms single resolution spatio-temporal filters in terms of quantitative performance measures as well as in terms of visual quality. Even though our current implementation of the new filter does not allow real-time processing, we believe that its optimized software implementation could be used for real-or near real-time filtering.

In block based motion estimation, each frame is divided into macroblocks and motion estimation is performed macroblock wise. It has high computational cost. In this paper, a block based motion estimation technique using color segmentation has been proposed which has single block for each object and motion estimation based on diamond search technique has been used to compute motion vectors. Experimental results show that the performance of Diamond search technique using color segmentation is better than conventional Diamond Search Technique in terms of PSNR, average number of search points and compression ratio.

Three-dimensional (3-D) video compression using wavelets decomposition along the temporal axis dictates that a number of video frames must be buffered to allow for the temporal decomposition. Buffering of frames allows for the temporal correlation to be made use of, and the larger the buffer the more effective the decomposition. One problem inherent in such a set up in interactive applications such as video conferencing, is that buffering translates into a corresponding time delay. In this paper, we show that 3-D coding of such image sequences can be achieved in the true sense of temporal direction decomposition but with much less buffering requirements. For a practical coder, this can be achieved by introducing an approximation to the way the transform coefficients are encoded. Applying wavelet decomposition using some types of filters may introduce edge errors, which become more prominent in short signal segments. We also present a solution to this problem for the Daubechies family of filters.

Video over wireless communication (VoW) has a lot of potential applications in home and office environment. The emergence of two new technologies, namely Bluetooth and MPEG-4, will prove useful in implementing VoW. Video transmission over wireless channel can be made possible by transmitting MPEG-4 bit streams over Bluetooth channels. This paper presents the implementation details of MPEG-4 coded video transmission over Bluetooth (MPEG4BT) via Host Controller Interface (HCI). A detailed set of testing scenarios and results obtained after actual video transmission are presented in this paper.

We consider the problem of simultaneous bitrate allocation for multiple video streams. Current methods for multiplexing video streams often rely on identifying the relative complexity of the video streams to improve the combined overall quality. In such methods, not all the videos benefit from the multiplexing process. Typically, the quality of high motion videos is improved at the expense of a reduction in the quality of low motion videos. In our approach, we use a competitive equilibrium allocation of bitrate to simultaneously improve the quality of all the video streams by finding trades between videos across time. A central controller collects rate-distortion information from each video user and makes a joint bitrate allocation decision. Each user encodes and transmits his video at the allocated bitrate through a shared channel. The proposed method uses information about not only the differing complexity of the video streams at every moment but also the differing complexity of each stream over time. Using the competitive equilibrium bitrate allocation approach for multiple video streams, simulation results show that all the video streams perform better or at least as well as with individual encoding. The results of this research will be useful both for ad hoc networks that employ a cluster head model and for cellular architectures.

The amount of video data stored on local devices or transmitted over the networks is permanently increased. The emerging of a more efficient next generation video coding standard is of a high demand at the moment. There seem to be two main contenders for the position of the next state-of-the-art video compression standard: JCT-VC H.265/HEVC and Google VP9. The announced aim of HEVC is to achieve twice more efficient compression compared to H.264/AVC, and VP9 was developed to get half the bit-rate of VP8 with royalty-free video M.P. Sharabayko, O.G. Ponomarev and R.I. Chernyak codec. Intra compression is one of the main features that determines the compression efficiency of the whole codec.

This paper presents a system architecture of an acquisition, compression and rendering system for 3D-TV and free-viewpoint video applications. We show that the proposed system yields two distinct advantages. First, it achieves an efficient compression of 3D/multi-view video by extending a standard H.264 encoder such that near backward compatibility is retained. Second, the proposed system can efficiently compress both 3D-TV and freeviewpoint multi-view video datasets using the single proposed system architecture.

This paper presents a scalable rate control (SRC) scheme based on a more accurate second-order rate-distortion model. A sliding-window method for data selection is used to mitigate the impact of a scene change. The data points for updating a model are adaptively selected such that the statistical behavior is improved. For video object (VO) shape coding, we use an adaptive threshold method to remove shape-coding artifacts for MPEG-4 applications. A dynamic bit allocation among VOs is implemented according to the coding complexities for each VO.

In this paper, we make a short foray through coding standards for still images and motion video. We first briefly discuss standards already in use, including: Group 3 and Group 4 for bilevel fax images; JPEG for still color images; and H.261, H.263, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2 for motion video. We then cover newly emerging standards such as JBIG1 and JBIG2 for bilevel fax images, JPEG-2000 for still color images, and H.263+ and MPEG-4 for motion video. Finally, we describe some directions currently beyond the standards such as hybrid coding of graphics/photo images, MPEG-7 for multimedia metadata, and possible new technologies.

H.264, a state-of-the-art video compression standard, is used across a range of products from cellphones to HDTV. These products have vastly different performance, power and cost requirements, necessitating different hardware-software solutions for H.264 decoding. We show that a design methodology and associated tools which support synthesis from high-level descriptions and which allow modular refinement throughout the design cycle, can share the majority of design effort across multiple design points. Using Bluespec SystemVerilog, we have created a variety of designs for the H.264 decoder tuned to support decoding at resolutions ranging from QCIF video (176 times 144 @ 15 frames/second) to 1080p video ((1280 times 1080)p @60 frames/second) in a 180 nm process. Some of these design points require major transformations of pipelining to increase performance or to reduce area. We also explore several common design issues surrounding memory structures, such as caches and on-chip vs. off...

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) standard addresses compression of video signals at approximately 1.5M-bits. MPEG is a generic standard and is independent of any particular applications. Applications of compressed video on digital storage media include asymmetric applications such as electronic publishing, games and entertainment. Symmetric applications of digital video include video mail, video conferencing, videotelephone and production of electronic publishing. Design of the MPEG algorithm presents a difficult challenge since quality requirements demand high compression that cannot be achieved with only intraframe coding. The algorithm's random access requirement, however, is best satisfied with pure intraframe coding. MPEG uses predictive and interpolative coding techniques to answer this challenge. Extensive details are presented.

Multimedia transmission has to handle a variety of compressed and uncompressed source signals such as data, text, image, audio, and video. On wireless channels the error rates are high and joint source/channel coding and decoding methods are advantageous. Also, the system architecture has to adapt to the bad channel conditions. Several examples of a joint design are given. We especially advocate the use of rate-compatible punctured systematic recursive convolutional (RCPRSC) codes which are shown to lead to a straightforward and versatile unequal error protection (UEP) design. In addition, the high-end receiver could use soft outputs and source-controlled channel decoding for even better performance.

A compressão de dados é um dos factores que mais contribuiu para o grande crescimento das tecnologias da informação e da comunicação. Sem compressão, a maioria dos produtos tecnológicos de consumo e entretenimento, que são hoje banais, nunca teria chegado a existir, destacando-se, entre muitos outros, o DVD, as câmaras fotográficas digitais, os leitores de MP3, o YouTube e o streaming de vídeo, as redes sem fios e a televisão digital. De facto, as tecnologias de compressão multimédia permitem representar a informação de uma forma mais eficiente, reduzindo os grandes volumes de espaço de armazenamento que ocupa e, portanto, a largura de banda que consome para se transmitir nas redes e na Internet. Este livro tem como objectivo principal apresentar uma introdução fundamentada, clara, acessível e abrangente aos conceitos e tecnologias relacionadas com métodos, algoritmos e normas internacionais de compressão de informação multimédia. Ao longo do livro são abordados, entre outros, os seguintes temas: Conceitos e normas sobre compressão de informação multimédia, incluindo texto, imagens, áudio e vídeo; Entropia e algoritmos de compressão sem perdas: Shannon-Fano, Huffman, Aritmética e LZW; Psicoacústica, métodos e normas de compressão de áudio, incluindo voz (ADPCM, vocoders) e áudio de alta-fidelidade (transformadas, MP3, AAC, MP4 e Dolby AC-3); Teoria rate-distortion, métodos de compressão de imagem (DPCM, transformadas DCT, waveletet Haar, quantificadores lineares e não-lineares); Normas internacionais JPEG e JPEG2000; Compressão de vídeo, redundância espacial e temporal, quantificação de vídeo para aplicações multimédia e de videoconferência; Normas MPEG.

An increasing number of industrial applications include video processing capacities, which allow, among others, remote monitoring of industrial processes and control of private and public areas. Image processing has real-time requirements which result in resource demands at both node and network levels. Moreover, video is usually compressed and coded to be transmitted which generates variable bit-rate streams. This introduces variable processing requirements inside the node in terms of memory and processor cycles required for the processing of the sequence of different video frames. A direct impact on the network resource is also obvious since variable network bandwidth will be required to transmit the frames that may affect the bandwidth assigned to other streams. Efficient distributed video surveillance requires that real-time constraints be respected or, at least, quality of service guarantees (QoS) be provided. The traditional approach to video transmission has focused at the level of the network protocols. However, architectural solutions at the middleware level introduce higher flexibility and more efficiency in development time. This paper presents an architecture that precisely defines an integral set up of the different components that are relevant in achieving realtime and QoS-based video surveillance. The paper describes how the DDS standard for real-time distributed systems, can be used for this purpose; based on the decoupled interaction paradigm of DDS, higher complexity surveillance deployments are possible. A prototype surveillance system is presented which includes video transmission and adaptation to environmental sensing events.

The US HDTV process has fostered substantial research and development activity over the last several years. The Advisory Committee on Adyanced Television Service (ACATS) was formed to advise the FCC on the technology and systems suitable for delivery of High Dejinition Service over terrestrial broadcast channels.

In the present era of Internet multimedia data especially Images and Videos are the most widely used digital format for data transmission. However due to their large data sizes and constraint of low bandwidth capacity of communication channel it is very difficult to transmit them at optimum speed maintaining the signal quality. Compression therefore, is a vital tool that not only reduces the data size thereby leading to faster data transmission but also protects it to some extent from transmission errors. A large variety of Image and Videos compression techniques are employed each having their own strengths and weaknesses. This paper is an effort to present an overview of image and video compression techniques, their working and comparison.

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is currently being prepared as the newest video coding standard of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group. The main goal of the HEVC standardization effort is to enable significantly improved compression performance relative to existing standards-in the range of 50% bit-rate reduction for equal perceptual video quality. This paper provides an overview of the technical features and characteristics of the HEVC standard.

This new book covers the processing and coding of multidimensional signals, in particular, still images and video. The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM and a companion Web site. The book is well designed and its material is timely. The only drawback is its lack of depth in covering color. The book would work with an introductory graduate course on still-image processing and compression or for an advanced graduate course on video processing and compression. The fact that the book takes a signal processing, rather than computer vision, viewpoint to image manipulation will make it a valuable resource for both researchers and students alike.

This issue (DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13132.92807) includes the following articles; P1151705543, author="Tieling Chen", title="Detail Preserving Sorted Difference Filter", P1151738585, author="Vladimir A. Kulyukin", title="GreedyHaarSpiker: An Algorithm for In Situ Detection of Highway Lane Boundaries with 1D Haar Wavelet Spikes", P1151714561, author="Poorva Waingankar and Sangeeta Joshi", title="Video Compression using Efficient Encoding Techniques for Low Bit Rate Applications", P1151733581, author="Ayush Purohit and Shardul Singh Chauhan", title="A Precise Technique for Hand Gesture Recognition", P1151748594, author="D. Boopathy and M. Sundaresan", title="Securing Images on Cloud using Multidimensional Approach", P1151747592, author="M. Anyayahan and M. Balinas and A. La Madrid and M. Laurel and C. Lopez and R. Tolentino", title="Rotational invariant Real Time Text Recognition",

The use of wavelets in the broad areas of source coding, communications, and networks is surveyed. Specifically, the impact of wavelets and wavelet theory in image coding, video coding, image interpolation, image-adaptive lifting transforms, multiple-description coding, and joint source-channel coding is overviewed. Recent contributions in these areas arising in the subsequent papers of the present special issue are described.

This paper is a review of the block matching algorithms used for motion estimation in video compression. It implements and compares 7 different types of block matching algorithms that range from the very basic Exhaustive Search to the recent fast adaptive algorithms like Adaptive Rood Pattern Search. The algorithms that are evaluated in this paper are widely accepted by the video compressing community and have been used in implementing various standards, ranging from MPEG1 / H.261 to MPEG4 / H.263. The paper also presents a very brief introduction to the entire flow of video compression.

Layered video coding creates multiple layers of unequal importance, which enables us to progressively refine the reconstructed video quality. When the base layer (BL) is corrupted or lost during transmission, the enhancement layers (ELs) must be dropped, regardless whether they are perfectly decoded or not, which implies that the transmission power assigned to the ELs is wasted. For the sake of combating this problem, the class of inter-layer forward error correction (IL-FEC) solutions, also referred to as layer-aware FEC (LA-FEC), 1 has been proposed for layered video transmissions, which jointly encode the BL and the ELs, thereby protecting the BL using the ELs. This tutorial aims for inspiring further research on IL-FEC/LA-FEC techniques, with special emphasis on the family of soft-decoded bit-level IL-FEC schemes.

The freedom offered by the MPEG-2 video compression standard is exploited to improve its coding performance by means of a rate-distortion optimal framework using a Lagrange formalism. Optimization is performed on a picture-bypicture basis, with either a bit-rate or a distortion target, and concerns a combination of quantization, prediction modes and motion vectors. Results from the individual optimization of each of these features have been reported in the literature. However, the combined optimization of all features together is new. The primary goal is the investigation of the achievable coding gains, so that bounds on the performance of MPEG-2 can be established. The gain in bit-rate may exceed 20%. The improvement in average distortion ranges between 0.5 and 2 dB, with peaks of 3.5 dB.

H.264/AVC is newest video coding standard of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group. The main goals of the H.264/AVC standardization effort have been enhanced compression performance and provision of a "network-friendly" video representation addressing "conversational" (video telephony) and "nonconversational" (storage, broadcast, or streaming) applications. H.264/AVC has achieved a significant improvement in rate-distortion efficiency relative to existing standards. This article provides an overview of the technical features of H.264/AVC, describes profiles and applications for the standard, and outlines the history of the standardization process.

We provide an overview of an architecture of today's Internet streaming media delivery networks and describe various problems that such systems pose with regard to video coding. We demonstrate that based on the distribution model (live or on-demand), the type of the network delivery mechanism (unicast versus multicast), and optimization criteria associated with particular segments of the network (e.g., minimization of distortion for a given connection rate, minimization of traffic in the dedicated delivery network, etc.), it is possible to identify several models of communication that may require different treatment from both source and channel coding perspectives. We explain how some of these problems can be addressed using a conventional framework of temporal motion-compensated, transform-based video compression algorithm, supported by appropriate channel-adaptation mechanisms in client and server components of a streaming media system. Most of these techniques have already been implemented in RealNetworks(R) RealSystem(R) 8 and its RealVideo(R) 8 codec, which we use throughout the paper to illustrate our results

For Motion Picture Special Effects, it is often necessary to take a source image of an acto& segment the actor from the unwanted background, and then composite over a new background. The standard approach requires the unwanted background to be a blue screen. While this technique is ...

A number of High Dynamic Range (HDR) video compression algorithms proposed to date have either been developed in isolation or only-partially compared with each other. Previous evaluations were conducted using quality assessment error metrics, which for the most part were developed for qualitative assessment of Low Dynamic Range (LDR) videos. This paper presents a comprehensive objective and subjective evaluation conducted with six published HDR video compression algorithms. The objective evaluation was undertaken on a large set of 39 HDR video sequences using seven numerical error metrics namely: PSNR, logPSNR, puPSNR, puSSIM, Weber MSE, HDR-VDP and HDR-VQM. The subjective evaluation involved six short-listed sequences and two ranking-based subjective experiments with hidden reference at two different output bitrates with 32 participants each, who were tasked to rank distorted HDR video footage compared to an uncompressed version of the same footage. Results suggest a strong correlation between the objective and subjective evaluation. Also, non-backward compatible compression algorithms appear to perform better at lower output bit rates than backward compatible algorithms across the settings used in this evaluation.

A Huffman code is a particular type of optimal prefix code that is commonly used for loss-less data compression. The process of finding such a code is known as Huffman coding. The output from Huffman's algorithm can be viewed as a variable-length code table for encoding a source symbol. The algorithm derives this table from the estimated probability or frequency of occurrence for each possible value of the source symbol. In this paper, we present a new approach to measure the performance and redundancy that work on two methods of coding like Huffman coding and Minimum Variance Huffman Coding. After getting the code-word for each symbol, we compress it on the basis of its binary values like 0 and 1 using binary coding. This is applied to both the approaches; this process is called as Double Huffman Coding. Finally we produce a better result than Huffman coding.

Digital images have become an important source of information in the modern world of communication systems. In their raw form, digital images require a tremendous amount of memory. Many research efforts have been devoted to the problem of image compression in the last two decades. Two different compression categories must be distinguished: lossless and lossy. Lossless compression is achieved if no distortion is introduced in the coded image. Applications requiring this type of compression include medical imaging and satellite photography. For applications such as video telephony or multimedia applications, some loss of information is usually tolerated in exchange for a high compression ratio.