Platforms for handling and development of audiovisual data

Estágio realizado na MOG Solutions e orientado por Vítor TeixeiraTese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informátca e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Current video compression algorithms: Comparisons, optimizations, and improvements

Compression algorithms have evolved significantly in recent years. Audio, still image, and video can be compressed significantly by taking advantage of the natural redundancies that occur within them. Video compression in particular has made significant advances. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, two of the major video compression standards, allowed video to be compressed at very low bit rates compared to the original video. The compression ratio for video that is perceptually lossless (losses can\u27t be visually perceived) can even be as high as 40 or 50 to 1 for certain videos. Videos with a small degradation in quality can be compressed at 100 to 1 or more; Although the MPEG standards provided low bit rate compression, even higher quality compression is required for efficient transmission over limited bandwidth networks, wireless networks, and broadcast mediums. Significant gains have been made over the current MPEG-2 standard in a newly developed standard called the Advanced Video Coder, also known as H.264 and MPEG-4 part 10. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Estimation of LRD present in H.264 video traces using wavelet analysis and proving the paramount of H.264 using OPF technique in wi-fi environment.

While there has always been a tremendous demand for streaming video over Wireless networks, the nature of the application still presents some challenging issues. These applications that transmit coded video sequence data over best-effort networks like the Internet, the application must cope with the changing network behaviour; especially, the source encoder rate should be controlled based on feedback from a channel estimator that explores the network intermittently. The arrival of powerful video compression techniques such as H.264, which advance in networking and telecommunications, opened up a whole new frontier for multimedia communications. The aim of this research is to transmit the H.264 coded video frames in the wireless network with maximum reliability and in a very efficient manner. When the H.264 encoded video sequences are to be transmitted through wireless network, it faces major difficulties in reaching the destination. The characteristics of H.264 video coded sequences are studied fully and their capability of transmitting in wireless networks are examined and a new approach called Optimal Packet Fragmentation (OPF) is framed and the H.264 coded sequences are tested in the wireless simulated environment. This research has three major studies involved in it. First part of the research has the study about Long Range Dependence (LRD) and the ways by which the self-similarity can be estimated. For estimating the LRD a few studies are carried out and Wavelet-based estimator is selected for the research because Wavelets incarcerate both time and frequency features in the data and regularly provides a more affluent picture than the classical Fourier analysis. The Wavelet used to estimate the self-similarity by using the variable called Hurst Parameter. Hurst Parameter tells the researcher about how a data can behave inside the transmitted network. This Hurst Parameter should be calculated for a more reliable transmission in the wireless network. The second part of the research deals with MPEG-4 and H.264 encoder. The study is carried out to prove which encoder is superior to the other. We need to know which encoder can provide excellent Quality of Service (QoS) and reliability. This study proves with the help of Hurst parameter that H.264 is superior to MPEG-4. The third part of the study is the vital part in this research; it deals with the H.264 video coded frames that are segmented into optimal packet size in the MAC Layer for an efficient and more reliable transfer in the wireless network. Finally the H.264 encoded video frames incorporated with the Optimal Packet Fragmentation are tested in the NS-2 wireless simulated network. The research proves the superiority of H.264 video encoder and OPF¿s master class

Novel source coding methods for optimising real time video codecs.

The quality of the decoded video is affected by errors occurring in the various layers of the protocol stack. In this thesis, disjoint errors occurring in different layers of the protocol stack are investigated with the primary objective of demonstrating the flexibility of the source coding layer. In the first part of the thesis, the errors occurring in the editing layer, due to the coexistence of different video standards in the broadcast market, are addressed. The problems investigated are ‘Field Reversal’ and ‘Mixed Pulldown’. Field Reversal is caused when the interlaced video fields are not shown in the same order as they were captured. This results in a shaky video display, as the fields are not displayed in chronological order. Additionally, Mixed Pulldown occurs when the video frame-rate is up-sampled and down-sampled, when digitised film material is being standardised to suit standard televisions. Novel image processing algorithms are proposed to solve these problems from the source coding layer. In the second part of the thesis, the errors occurring in the transmission layer due to data corruption are addressed. The usage of block level source error-resilient methods over bit level channel coding methods are investigated and improvements are suggested. The secondary objective of the thesis is to optimise the proposed algorithm’s architecture for real-time implementation, since the problems are of a commercial nature. The Field Reversal and Mixed Pulldown algorithms were tested in real time at MTV (Music Television) and are made available commercially through ‘Cerify’, a Linux-based media testing box manufactured by Tektronix Plc. The channel error-resilient algorithms were tested in a laboratory environment using Matlab and performance improvements are obtained

Low delay video coding

Analogue wireless cameras have been employed for decades, however they have not become an universal solution due to their difficulties of set up and use. The main problem is the link robustness which mainly depends on the requirement of a line-of-sight view between transmitter and receiver, a working condition not always possible. Despite the use of tracking antenna system such as the Portable Intelligent Tracking Antenna (PITA [1]), if strong multipath fading occurs (e.g. obstacles between transmitter and receiver) the picture rapidly falls apart. Digital wireless cameras based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation schemes give a valid solution for the above problem. OFDM offers strong multipath protection due to the insertion of the guard interval; in particular, the OFDM-based DVB-T standard has proven to offer excellent performance for the broadcasting of multimedia streams with bit rates over 10 Mbps in difficult terrestrial propagation channels, for fixed and portable applications. However, in typical conditions, the latency needed to compress/decompress a digital video signal at Standard Definition (SD) resolution is of the order of 15 frames, which corresponds to ≃ 0.5 sec. This delay introduces a serious problem when wireless and wired cameras have to be interfaced. Cabled cameras do not use compression, because the cable which directly links transmitter and receiver does not impose restrictive bandwidth constraints. Therefore, the only latency that affects a cable cameras link system is the on cable propagation delay, almost not significant, when switching between wired and wireless cameras, the residual latency makes it impossible to achieve the audio-video synchronization, with consequent disagreeable effects. A way to solve this problem is to provide a low delay digital processing scheme based on a video coding algorithm which avoids massive intermediate data storage. The analysis of the last MPEG based coding standards puts in evidence a series of problems which limits the real performance of a low delay MPEG coding system. The first effort of this work is to study the MPEG standard to understand its limit from both the coding delay and implementation complexity points of views. This thesis also investigates an alternative solution based on HERMES codec, a proprietary algorithm which is described implemented and evaluated. HERMES achieves better results than MPEG in terms of latency and implementation complexity, at the price of higher compression ratios, which means high output bit rates. The use of HERMES codec together with an enhanced OFDM system [2] leads to a competitive solution for wireless digital professional video applications

Evaluation of the use of remotely sensed images to speciate mixed Appalachian forests

Advancements in technology have led to development of various new sensors and platforms. Among them, the airborne digital camera has potential for use in detailed forest vegetation management, and they offer a number of advantages over conventional aerial photographs. The aim of the study was to determine the ability to speciate mixed Appalachian hardwood forests using the Airborne Data Acquisition and Registration (ADAR) System 1000, and to determine the optimal spatial resolution and the optimal scale of the acquired images. Digital images of a 200-ha area in west central West Virginia were acquired for the study.;The first objective of the study was to determine the optimal spatial resolution of Central Appalachian hardwoods images through analysis of spatial autocorrelation and semivariance.;The next objective of the study was to determine the optimal scale of the acquired images, which represents the pixel size at which the classification accuracy was optimized.;The third objective of the study was to evaluate the ability to determine the species composition of the study area using the acquired images. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

FPGA Prototyping of a Watermarking Algorithm for MPEG-4

In the immediate future, multimedia product distribution through the Internet will become main stream. However, it can also have the side effect of unauthorized duplication and distribution of multimedia products. That effect could be a critical challenge to the legal ownership of copyright and intellectual property. Many schemes have been proposed to address these issues; one is digital watermarking which is appropriate for image and video copyright protection. Videos distributed via the Internet must be processed by compression for low bit rate, due to bandwidth limitations. The most widely adapted video compression standard is MPEG-4. Discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain watermarking is a secure algorithm which could survive video compression procedures and, most importantly, attacks attempting to remove the watermark, with a visibly degraded video quality result after the watermark attacks. For a commercial broadcasting video system, real-time response is always required. For this reason, an FPGA hardware implementation is studied in this work. This thesis deals with video compression, watermarking algorithms and their hardware implementation with FPGAs. A prototyping VLSI architecture will implement video compression and watermarking algorithms with the FPGA. The prototype is evaluated with video and watermarking quality metrics. Finally, it is seen that the video qualities of the watermarking at the uncompressed vs. the compressed domain are only 1dB of PSNR lower. However, the cost of compressed domain watermarking is the complexity of drift compensation for canceling the drifting effect