A generic service management architecture for multimedia multipoint communications

With rapid advances in multimedia processing technologies, and in high bandwidth network technologies, new kinds of multimedia applications are now emerging. These applications require real-time, multimedia, and multipoint interactions involving multiple communicating entities and leading to a need of more sophisticated communication control functionalities. In this paper, a generic integrated and flexible service management architecture for multimedia multipoint communications is proposed, which offers three main generic functions, namely Quality of Service (QoS) negotiation, QoS monitoring and control, and session management

Real-time multimedia-based education through the Internet

The rapid advances in computer and communications technologies are challenging the American education systems to provide increased educational opportunities beyond the traditional geographic boundaries at a reasonable cost. Many educational institutions are answering this challenge by developing distance education programs. Distance education provides effective learning environment. An important requirement for effective distance education is the availability of continuous interactivity and immediate feedback. Over the Internet, synchronous sharing of multimedia content introduces unacceptable delays as network bandwidth is limited. In this thesis, the issue of Internet bandwidth is minimized and a novel system is developed for distance education using multimedia course material over the Internet. The data rich multimedia materials reside at remote computers and are only remotely activated utilizing low bandwidth signals over the Internet. As a result, the large download times associated with multimedia files are eliminated creating an almost real time link between the remote locations

Video Traffic Characteristics of Modern Encoding Standards: H.264/AVC with SVC and MVC Extensions and H.265/HEVC

abstract: Video encoding for multimedia services over communication networks has significantly advanced in recent years with the development of the highly efficient and flexible H.264/AVC video coding standard and its SVC extension. The emerging H.265/HEVC video coding standard as well as 3D video coding further advance video coding for multimedia communications. This paper first gives an overview of these new video coding standards and then examines their implications for multimedia communications by studying the traffic characteristics of long videos encoded with the new coding standards. We review video coding advances from MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Part 2 to H.264/AVC and its SVC and MVC extensions as well as H.265/HEVC. For single-layer (nonscalable) video, we compare H.265/HEVC and H.264/AVC in terms of video traffic and statistical multiplexing characteristics. Our study is the first to examine the H.265/HEVC traffic variability for long videos. We also illustrate the video traffic characteristics and statistical multiplexing of scalable video encoded with the SVC extension of H.264/AVC as well as 3D video encoded with the MVC extension of H.264/AVC.View the article as published at https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/189481

Distance Multimedia Degree Studies. The Application of Multimedia Technology to Multimedia Studies

This paper describes the set of courses that make up the distance multimedia degree studies offered by the UPC in conjunction with the UOC. These courses are designed to meet the increasing demand for continued education by integrating the advances in information technologies currently arising from new paradigms in distance learning. The study plan has been specially designed and is fully interdisciplinary. The plan draws on three areas of knowledge: creation and design of the programme content, marketing and management of multimedia production, and computer and communications technology. The educational model seeks a balance between practical activities, similar to those students are likely to undertake in the workplace, and theory−based reading tasks aimed at furthering and consolidating their grasp of the concepts involved. The model is structured around three elements: self−access material, virtual activities, and real activities. The self−access materials and the assessment system give the student continued feedback on their progress. The average age of the students is 32'3 years (range 19−55). Most are men (77%), and 60% are pursuing university studies for the first time. A key element of the distance multimedia studies is the involvement of the teachers in the preparation of the multimedia teaching materials. This role means that they must be trained in materials design and must use models of specific contents. The activities of the course tutor and the general tutor combine a proactive attitude with rapid response to the questions that arise as part of the Distance Multimedia Degree.This paper describes the set of courses that make up the distance multimedia degree studies offered by the UPC in conjunction with the UOC. These courses are designed to meet the increasing demand for continued education by integrating the advances in information technologies currently arising from new paradigms in distance learning. The study plan has been specially designed and is fully interdisciplinary. The plan draws on three areas of knowledge: creation and design of the programme content, marketing and management of multimedia production, and computer and communications technology. The educational model seeks a balance between practical activities, similar to those students are likely to undertake in the workplace, and theory−based reading tasks aimed at furthering and consolidating their grasp of the concepts involved. The model is structured around three elements: self−access material, virtual activities, and real activities. The self−access materials and the assessment system give the student continued feedback on their progress. The average age of the students is 32'3 years (range 19−55). Most are men (77%), and 60% are pursuing university studies for the first time. A key element of the distance multimedia studies is the involvement of the teachers in the preparation of the multimedia teaching materials. This role means that they must be trained in materials design and must use models of specific contents. The activities of the course tutor and the general tutor combine a proactive attitude with rapid response to the questions that arise as part of the Distance Multimedia Degree

Distance Multimedia Degree Studies. The Application of Multimedia Technology to Multimedia Studies

This paper describes the set of courses that make up the distance multimedia degree studies offered by the UPC in conjunction with the UOC. These courses are designed to meet the increasing demand for continued education by integrating the advances in information technologies currently arising from new paradigms in distance learning.The study plan has been specially designed and is fully interdisciplinary. The plan draws on three areas of knowledge: creation and design of the programme content, marketing and management of multimedia production, and computer and communications technology.The educational model seeks a balance between practical activities, similar to those students are likely to undertake in the workplace, and theory−based reading tasks aimed at furthering and consolidating their grasp of the concepts involved. The model is structured around three elements: self−access material, virtual activities, and real activities. The self−access materials and the assessment system give the student continued feedback on their progress. The average age of the students is 32'3 years (range 19−55). Most are men (77%), and 60% are pursuing university studies for the first time. A key element of the distance multimedia studies is the involvement of the teachers in the preparation of the multimedia teaching materials. This role means that they must be trained in materials design and must use models of specific contents.The activities of the course tutor and the general tutor combine a proactive attitude with rapid response to the questions that arise as part of the Distance Multimedia Degree.This paper describes the set of courses that make up the distance multimedia degree studies offered by the UPC in conjunction with the UOC. These courses are designed to meet the increasing demand for continued education by integrating the advances in information technologies currently arising from new paradigms in distance learning.The study plan has been specially designed and is fully interdisciplinary. The plan draws on three areas of knowledge: creation and design of the programme content, marketing and management of multimedia production, and computer and communications technology.The educational model seeks a balance between practical activities, similar to those students are likely to undertake in the workplace, and theory−based reading tasks aimed at furthering and consolidating their grasp of the concepts involved. The model is structured around three elements: self−access material, virtual activities, and real activities. The self−access materials and the assessment system give the student continued feedback on their progress. The average age of the students is 32'3 years (range 19−55). Most are men (77%), and 60% are pursuing university studies for the first time. A key element of the distance multimedia studies is the involvement of the teachers in the preparation of the multimedia teaching materials. This role means that they must be trained in materials design and must use models of specific contents.The activities of the course tutor and the general tutor combine a proactive attitude with rapid response to the questions that arise as part of the Distance Multimedia Degree

Resilient Digital Video Transmission over Wireless Channels using Pixel-Level Artefact Detection Mechanisms

Recent advances in communications and video coding technology have brought multimedia communications into everyday life, where a variety of services and applications are being integrated within different devices such that multimedia content is provided everywhere and on any device. H.264/AVC provides a major advance on preceding video coding standards obtaining as much as twice the coding efficiency over these standards (Richardson I.E.G., 2003, Wiegand T. & Sullivan G.J., 2007). Furthermore, this new codec inserts video related information within network abstraction layer units (NALUs), which facilitates the transmission of H.264/AVC coded sequences over a variety of network environments (Stockhammer, T. & Hannuksela M.M., 2005) making it applicable for a broad range of applications such as TV broadcasting, mobile TV, video-on-demand, digital media storage, high definition TV, multimedia streaming and conversational applications. Real-time wireless conversational and broadcast applications are particularly challenging as, in general, reliable delivery cannot be guaranteed (Stockhammer, T. & Hannuksela M.M., 2005). The H.264/AVC standard specifies several error resilient strategies to minimise the effect of transmission errors on the perceptual quality of the reconstructed video sequences. However, these methods assume a packet-loss scenario where the receiver discards and conceals all the video information contained within a corrupted NALU packet. This implies that the error resilient methods adopted by the standard operate at a lower bound since not all the information contained within a corrupted NALU packet is un-utilizable (Stockhammer, T. et al., 2003).peer-reviewe

Fuzzy Logic Control of Adaptive ARQ for Video Distribution over a Bluetooth Wireless Link

Bluetooth's default automatic repeat request (ARQ) scheme is not suited to video distribution resulting in missed display and decoded deadlines. Adaptive ARQ with active discard of expired packets from the send buffer is an alternative approach. However, even with the addition of cross-layer adaptation to picture-type packet importance, ARQ is not ideal in conditions of a deteriorating RF channel. The paper presents fuzzy logic control of ARQ, based on send buffer fullness and the head-of-line packet's deadline. The advantage of the fuzzy logic approach, which also scales its output according to picture type importance, is that the impact of delay can be directly introduced to the model, causing retransmissions to be reduced compared to all other schemes. The scheme considers both the delay constraints of the video stream and at the same time avoids send buffer overflow. Tests explore a variety of Bluetooth send buffer sizes and channel conditions. For adverse channel conditions and buffer size, the tests show an improvement of at least 4 dB in video quality compared to nonfuzzy schemes. The scheme can be applied to any codec with I-, P-, and (possibly) B-slices by inspection of packet headers without the need for encoder intervention.</jats:p

Effect of oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) fibers to the compressive strength and water absorption of concrete

Growing popularity based on environmentally-friendly, low cost and lightweight building materials in the construction industry has led to a need to examine how these characteristics can be achieved and at the same time giving the benefit to the environment and maintain the material requirements based on the standards required. Recycling of waste generated from industrial and agricultural activities as measures of building materials is not only a viable solution to the problem of pollution but also to produce an economic design of building