A novel method for subjective picture quality assessment and further studies of HDTV formats

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ IEEE 2008.This paper proposes a novel method for the assessment of picture quality, called triple stimulus continuous evaluation scale (TSCES), to allow the direct comparison of different HDTV formats. The method uses an upper picture quality anchor and a lower picture quality anchor with defined impairments. The HDTV format under test is evaluated in a subjective comparison with the upper and lower anchors. The method utilizes three displays in a particular vertical arrangement. In an initial series of tests with the novel method, the HDTV formats 1080p/50,1080i/25, and 720p/50 were compared at various bit-rates and with seven different content types on three identical 1920 times 1080 pixel displays. It was found that the new method provided stable and consistent results. The method was tested with 1080p/50,1080i/25, and 720p/50 HDTV images that had been coded with H.264/AVC High profile. The result of the assessment was that the progressive HDTV formats found higher appreciation by the assessors than the interlaced HDTV format. A system chain proposal is given for future media production and delivery to take advantage of this outcome. Recommendations for future research conclude the paper

Spatial Prediction in the H.264/AVC FRExt Coder and its Optimization

The chapter presents a review of the fast spatial prediction strategy that were designed for the Intra coding mode of the video coding standard H.264/AVC. At the end, the author presents an effective strategy based on belief propagation message passing

Motion estimation and CABAC VLSI co-processors for real-time high-quality H.264/AVC video coding

Real-time and high-quality video coding is gaining a wide interest in the research and industrial community for different applications. H.264/AVC, a recent standard for high performance video coding, can be successfully exploited in several scenarios including digital video broadcasting, high-definition TV and DVD-based systems, which require to sustain up to tens of Mbits/s. To that purpose this paper proposes optimized architectures for H.264/AVC most critical tasks, Motion estimation and context adaptive binary arithmetic coding. Post synthesis results on sub-micron CMOS standard-cells technologies show that the proposed architectures can actually process in real-time 720 × 480 video sequences at 30 frames/s and grant more than 50 Mbits/s. The achieved circuit complexity and power consumption budgets are suitable for their integration in complex VLSI multimedia systems based either on AHB bus centric on-chip communication system or on novel Network-on-Chip (NoC) infrastructures for MPSoC (Multi-Processor System on Chip

An efficient rate control algorithm for a wavelet video codec

Rate control plays an essential role in video coding and transmission to provide the best video quality at the receiver's end given the constraint of certain network conditions. In this paper, a rate control algorithm using the Quality Factor (QF) optimization method is proposed for the wavelet-based video codec and implemented on an open source Dirac video encoder. A mathematical model which we call Rate-QF (R - QF) model is derived to generate the optimum QF for the current coding frame according to the target bitrate. The proposed algorithm is a complete one pass process and does not require complex mathematical calculation. The process of calculating the QF is quite simple and further calculation is not required for each coded frame. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can control the bitrate precisely (within 1% of target bitrate in average). Moreover, the variation of bitrate over each Group of Pictures (GOPs) is lower than that of H.264. This is an advantage in preventing the buffer overflow and underflow for real-time multimedia data streaming

Distributed video coding for wireless video sensor networks: a review of the state-of-the-art architectures

Distributed video coding (DVC) is a relatively new video coding architecture originated from two fundamental theorems namely, Slepian–Wolf and Wyner–Ziv. Recent research developments have made DVC attractive for applications in the emerging domain of wireless video sensor networks (WVSNs). This paper reviews the state-of-the-art DVC architectures with a focus on understanding their opportunities and gaps in addressing the operational requirements and application needs of WVSNs

Complexity adaptation in video encoders for power limited platforms

With the emergence of video services on power limited platforms, it is necessary to consider both performance-centric and constraint-centric signal processing techniques. Traditionally, video applications have a bandwidth or computational resources constraint or both. The recent H.264/AVC video compression standard offers significantly improved efficiency and flexibility compared to previous standards, which leads to less emphasis on bandwidth. However, its high computational complexity is a problem for codecs running on power limited plat- forms. Therefore, a technique that integrates both complexity and bandwidth issues in a single framework should be considered. In this thesis we investigate complexity adaptation of a video coder which focuses on managing computational complexity and provides significant complexity savings when applied to recent standards. It consists of three sub functions specially designed for reducing complexity and a framework for using these sub functions; Variable Block Size (VBS) partitioning, fast motion estimation, skip macroblock detection, and complexity adaptation framework. Firstly, the VBS partitioning algorithm based on the Walsh Hadamard Transform (WHT) is presented. The key idea is to segment regions of an image as edges or flat regions based on the fact that prediction errors are mainly affected by edges. Secondly, a fast motion estimation algorithm called Fast Walsh Boundary Search (FWBS) is presented on the VBS partitioned images. Its results outperform other commonly used fast algorithms. Thirdly, a skip macroblock detection algorithm is proposed for use prior to motion estimation by estimating the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients after quantisation. A new orthogonal transform called the S-transform is presented for predicting Integer DCT coefficients from Walsh Hadamard Transform coefficients. Complexity saving is achieved by deciding which macroblocks need to be processed and which can be skipped without processing. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves significant complexity savings with a negligible loss in rate-distortion performance. Finally, a complexity adaptation framework which combines all three techniques mentioned above is proposed for maximizing the perceptual quality of coded video on a complexity constrained platform