14,831 research outputs found
Perceptually-Driven Video Coding with the Daala Video Codec
The Daala project is a royalty-free video codec that attempts to compete with
the best patent-encumbered codecs. Part of our strategy is to replace core
tools of traditional video codecs with alternative approaches, many of them
designed to take perceptual aspects into account, rather than optimizing for
simple metrics like PSNR. This paper documents some of our experiences with
these tools, which ones worked and which did not. We evaluate which tools are
easy to integrate into a more traditional codec design, and show results in the
context of the codec being developed by the Alliance for Open Media.Comment: 19 pages, Proceedings of SPIE Workshop on Applications of Digital
Image Processing (ADIP), 201
Control of Multiple Remote Servers for Quality-Fair Delivery of Multimedia Contents
This paper proposes a control scheme for the quality-fair delivery of several
encoded video streams to mobile users sharing a common wireless resource. Video
quality fairness, as well as similar delivery delays are targeted among
streams. The proposed controller is implemented within some aggregator located
near the bottleneck of the network. The transmission rate among streams is
adapted based on the quality of the already encoded and buffered packets in the
aggregator. Encoding rate targets are evaluated by the aggregator and fed back
to each remote video server (fully centralized solution), or directly evaluated
by each server in a distributed way (partially distributed solution). Each
encoding rate target is adjusted for each stream independently based on the
corresponding buffer level or buffering delay in the aggregator. Communication
delays between the servers and the aggregator are taken into account. The
transmission and encoding rate control problems are studied with a
control-theoretic perspective. The system is described with a multi-input
multi-output model. Proportional Integral (PI) controllers are used to adjust
the video quality and control the aggregator buffer levels. The system
equilibrium and stability properties are studied. This provides guidelines for
choosing the parameters of the PI controllers. Experimental results show the
convergence of the proposed control system and demonstrate the improvement in
video quality fairness compared to a classical transmission rate fair streaming
solution and to a utility max-min fair approach
Streaming Video over HTTP with Consistent Quality
In conventional HTTP-based adaptive streaming (HAS), a video source is
encoded at multiple levels of constant bitrate representations, and a client
makes its representation selections according to the measured network
bandwidth. While greatly simplifying adaptation to the varying network
conditions, this strategy is not the best for optimizing the video quality
experienced by end users. Quality fluctuation can be reduced if the natural
variability of video content is taken into consideration. In this work, we
study the design of a client rate adaptation algorithm to yield consistent
video quality. We assume that clients have visibility into incoming video
within a finite horizon. We also take advantage of the client-side video
buffer, by using it as a breathing room for not only network bandwidth
variability, but also video bitrate variability. The challenge, however, lies
in how to balance these two variabilities to yield consistent video quality
without risking a buffer underrun. We propose an optimization solution that
uses an online algorithm to adapt the video bitrate step-by-step, while
applying dynamic programming at each step. We incorporate our solution into
PANDA -- a practical rate adaptation algorithm designed for HAS deployment at
scale.Comment: Refined version submitted to ACM Multimedia Systems Conference
(MMSys), 201
Anticipatory Buffer Control and Quality Selection for Wireless Video Streaming
Video streaming is in high demand by mobile users, as recent studies
indicate. In cellular networks, however, the unreliable wireless channel leads
to two major problems. Poor channel states degrade video quality and interrupt
the playback when a user cannot sufficiently fill its local playout buffer:
buffer underruns occur. In contrast to that, good channel conditions cause
common greedy buffering schemes to pile up very long buffers. Such
over-buffering wastes expensive wireless channel capacity.
To keep buffering in balance, we employ a novel approach. Assuming that we
can predict data rates, we plan the quality and download time of the video
segments ahead. This anticipatory scheduling avoids buffer underruns by
downloading a large number of segments before a channel outage occurs, without
wasting wireless capacity by excessive buffering. We formalize this approach as
an optimization problem and derive practical heuristics for segmented video
streaming protocols (e.g., HLS or MPEG DASH). Simulation results and testbed
measurements show that our solution essentially eliminates playback
interruptions without significantly decreasing video quality
FVV Live: A real-time free-viewpoint video system with consumer electronics hardware
FVV Live is a novel end-to-end free-viewpoint video system, designed for low
cost and real-time operation, based on off-the-shelf components. The system has
been designed to yield high-quality free-viewpoint video using consumer-grade
cameras and hardware, which enables low deployment costs and easy installation
for immersive event-broadcasting or videoconferencing.
The paper describes the architecture of the system, including acquisition and
encoding of multiview plus depth data in several capture servers and virtual
view synthesis on an edge server. All the blocks of the system have been
designed to overcome the limitations imposed by hardware and network, which
impact directly on the accuracy of depth data and thus on the quality of
virtual view synthesis. The design of FVV Live allows for an arbitrary number
of cameras and capture servers, and the results presented in this paper
correspond to an implementation with nine stereo-based depth cameras.
FVV Live presents low motion-to-photon and end-to-end delays, which enables
seamless free-viewpoint navigation and bilateral immersive communications.
Moreover, the visual quality of FVV Live has been assessed through subjective
assessment with satisfactory results, and additional comparative tests show
that it is preferred over state-of-the-art DIBR alternatives
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