Hierarchical motion estimation for side information creation in Wyner-Ziv video coding

Recently, several video coding solutions based on the distributed source coding paradigm have appeared in the literature. Among them, Wyner-Ziv video coding schemes enable to achieve a flexible distribution of the computational complexity between the encoder and decoder, promising to fulfill requirements of emerging applications such as visual sensor networks and wireless surveillance. To achieve a performance comparable to the predictive video coding solutions, it is necessary to increase the quality of the side information, this means the estimation of the original frame created at the decoder. In this paper, a hierarchical motion estimation (HME) technique using different scales and increasingly smaller block sizes is proposed to generate a more reliable estimation of the motion field. The HME technique is integrated in a well known motion compensated frame interpolation framework responsible for the creation of the side information in a Wyner-Ziv video decoder. The proposed technique enables to achieve improvements in the rate-distortion (RD) performance up to 7 dB when compared to H.263+ Intra and 3 dB when compared to H.264/AVC Intra

Mobile Audiovisual Terminal: System Design and Subjective Testing in DECT and UMTS networks

It is anticipated that there will shortly be a requirement for multimedia terminals that operate via mobile communications systems. This paper presents a functional specification for such a terminal operating at 32 kb/s in a digital European cordless telecommunications (DECT) and universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) radio network. A terminal has been built, based on a PC with digital signal processor (DSP) boards for audio and video coding and decoding. Speech coding is by a phonetically driven code-excited linear prediction (CELP) speech coder and video coding by a block-oriented hybrid discrete cosine transform (DCT) coder. Separate channel coding is provided for the audio and video data. The paper describes the techniques used for audio and video coding, channel coding, and synchronization. Methods of subjective testing in a DECT network and in a UMTS network are also described. These consisted of subjective tests of first impressions of the mobile audio–visual terminal (MAVT) quality, interactive tests, and the completion of an exit questionnaire. The test results showed that the quality of the audio was sufficiently good for comprehension and the video was sufficiently good for following and repeating simple mechanical tasks. However, the quality of the MAVT was not good enough for general use where high-quality audio and video was needed, especially when transmission was in a noisy radio environment

A Content-Adaptive Side Information Generation Method for Distributed Video Coding

AbstractIn this paper, a content-adaptive method to generate side information at the block level is presented. First, motion compensated temporal interpolation (MCTI) algorithm is used between the reconstructed key frames at the decoder to acquire initial motion vectors. Second, the image is segmented and the edge of moving region is detected by obtained the residual frame between two consecutive key frames. Furthermore, hierarchical motion estimation (HME) and motion vector filter (MVF) are adopted for edge region and an adaptive motion vector filter (AMVF) is introduced in non-edge region to correct the false estimated motion vectors. The proposal is tested and compared with the results of the state-of-the-art DISCOVER codec and RD improvements on the set of test sequences are observed

Fusion of Global and Local Motion Estimation Using Foreground Objects for Distributed Video Coding

International audienceThe side information in distributed video coding is estimated using the available decoded frames, and exploited for the decoding and reconstruction of other frames. The quality of the side information has a strong impact on the performance of distributed video coding. Here we propose a new approach that combines both global and local side information to improve coding performance. Since the background pixels in a frame are assigned to global estimation and the foreground objects to local estimation, one needs to estimate foreground objects in the side information using the backward and forward foreground objects, The background pixels are directly taken from the global side information. Specifically, elastic curves and local motion compensation are used to generate the foreground objects masks in the side information. Experimental results show that, as far as the rate-distortion performance is concerned, the proposed approach can achieve a PSNR improvement of up to 1.39 dB for a GOP size of 2, and up to 4.73 dB for larger GOP sizes, with respect to the reference DISCOVER codec. Index Terms A. ABOU-ELAILAH, F. DUFAUX, M. CAGNAZZO, and B. PESQUET-POPESCU are with the Signal and Image Processin

On the Effectiveness of Video Recolouring as an Uplink-model Video Coding Technique

For decades, conventional video compression formats have advanced via incremental improvements with each subsequent standard achieving better rate-distortion (RD) efficiency at the cost of increased encoder complexity compared to its predecessors. Design efforts have been driven by common multi-media use cases such as video-on-demand, teleconferencing, and video streaming, where the most important requirements are low bandwidth and low video playback latency. Meeting these requirements involves the use of computa- tionally expensive block-matching algorithms which produce excellent compression rates and quick decoding times. However, emerging use cases such as Wireless Video Sensor Networks, remote surveillance, and mobile video present new technical challenges in video compression. In these scenarios, the video capture and encoding devices are often power-constrained and have limited computational resources available, while the decoder devices have abundant resources and access to a dedicated power source. To address these use cases, codecs must be power-aware and offer a reasonable trade-off between video quality, bitrate, and encoder complexity. Balancing these constraints requires a complete rethinking of video compression technology. The uplink video-coding model represents a new paradigm to address these low-power use cases, providing the ability to redistribute computational complexity by offloading the motion estimation and compensation steps from encoder to decoder. Distributed Video Coding (DVC) follows this uplink model of video codec design, and maintains high quality video reconstruction through innovative channel coding techniques. The field of DVC is still early in its development, with many open problems waiting to be solved, and no defined video compression or distribution standards. Due to the experimental nature of the field, most DVC codec to date have focused on encoding and decoding the Luma plane only, which produce grayscale reconstructed videos. In this thesis, a technique called “video recolouring” is examined as an alternative to DVC. Video recolour- ing exploits the temporal redundancies between colour planes, reducing video bitrate by removing Chroma information from specific frames and then recolouring them at the decoder. A novel video recolouring algorithm called Motion-Compensated Recolouring (MCR) is proposed, which uses block motion estimation and bi-directional weighted motion-compensation to reconstruct Chroma planes at the decoder. MCR is used to enhance a conventional base-layer codec, and shown to reduce bitrate by up to 16% with only a slight decrease in objective quality. MCR also outperforms other video recolouring algorithms in terms of objective video quality, demonstrating up to 2 dB PSNR improvement in some cases

Selective reconstruction of low motion regions in distributed video coding

The research work disclosed in this publication is partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship Scheme (Malta). The scholarship is part-financed by the European Union - European Social Fund. (ESF 1.25).The Distributed Video Coding (DVC) paradigm offers lightweight encoding capabilities which are suitable for devices with limited computational resources. Moreover, DVC techniques can theoretically achieve the same coding efficiency as the traditional video coding schemes which employ more complex encoders. However, the performance of practical DVC architectures is still far from such theoretical bounds, mainly due to the inaccurate Side Information (SI) predicted at the decoder. The work presented in this paper shows that the soft-input values predicted at the decoder may not correctly predict the Wyner-Ziv coefficients, even for regions containing low motion. This generally degrades compression efficiency. To mitigate this, the proposed system predicts the quality of the SI for regions with low motion and then employs a technique which avoids correcting mismatch at locations where the SI and WZ falls within different quantization intervals but the prediction error is within an acceptable range. The experimental results demonstrate that the average Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) is improved by up to 0.39dB compared to the state-of-the-art DVC architectures, like the DISCOVER codec.peer-reviewe

Improved side information generation for distributed video coding

As a new coding paradigm, distributed video coding (DVC) deals with lossy source coding using side information to exploit the statistics at the decoder to reduce computational demands at the encoder. The performance of DVC highly depends on the quality of side information. With a better side information generation method, fewer bits will be requested from the encoder and more reliable decoded frames will be obtained. In this paper, a side information generation method is introduced to further improve the rate-distortion (RD) performance of transform domain distributed video coding. This algorithm consists of a variable block size based Y, U and V component motion estimation and an adaptive weighted overlapped block motion compensation (OBMC). The proposal is tested and compared with the results of an executable DVC codec released by DISCOVER group (DIStributed COding for Video sERvices). RD improvements on the set of test sequences are observed