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

An Iterative Detection Aided Unequal Error Protection Wavelet Video Scheme Using Irregular Convolutional Codes

A wavelet-based videophone scheme proposed, where the video bits are Unequal Error Protection (UEP) using Irregular Convolutional Codes (IRCCs). The proposed system uses Adaptive Arithmetic Coding (AAC) for encoding the motion vectors and individual wavelet subband coefficients. The turbo equalized IRCC-aided videophone scheme is capable of attaining a near unimpaired video quality for channel Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs) in excess of about 4.5dB over a five-path dispersive AWGN channel

Multi-loop quality scalability based on high efficiency video coding

Scalable video coding performance largely depends on the underlying single layer coding efficiency. In this paper, the quality scalability capabilities are evaluated on a base of the new High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard under development. To enable the evaluation, a multi-loop codec has been designed using HEVC. Adaptive inter-layer prediction is realized by including the lower layer in the reference list of the enhancement layer. As a result, adaptive scalability on frame level and on prediction unit level is accomplished. Compared to single layer coding, 19.4% Bjontegaard Delta bitrate increase is measured over approximately a 30dB to 40dB PSNR range. When compared to simulcast, 20.6% bitrate reduction can be achieved. Under equivalent conditions, the presented technique achieves 43.8% bitrate reduction over Coarse Grain Scalability of the SVC - H.264/AVC-based standard

Design of a transport coding scheme for high-quality video over ATM networks

Caption title.Includes bibliographical references (p. 38-39).Supported by ARPA. F30602-92-C-0030 Supported by the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. DAAH04-95-1-0103V. Parthasarathy, J.W. Modestino and K.S. Vastola

Loss-resilient Coding of Texture and Depth for Free-viewpoint Video Conferencing

Free-viewpoint video conferencing allows a participant to observe the remote 3D scene from any freely chosen viewpoint. An intermediate virtual viewpoint image is commonly synthesized using two pairs of transmitted texture and depth maps from two neighboring captured viewpoints via depth-image-based rendering (DIBR). To maintain high quality of synthesized images, it is imperative to contain the adverse effects of network packet losses that may arise during texture and depth video transmission. Towards this end, we develop an integrated approach that exploits the representation redundancy inherent in the multiple streamed videos a voxel in the 3D scene visible to two captured views is sampled and coded twice in the two views. In particular, at the receiver we first develop an error concealment strategy that adaptively blends corresponding pixels in the two captured views during DIBR, so that pixels from the more reliable transmitted view are weighted more heavily. We then couple it with a sender-side optimization of reference picture selection (RPS) during real-time video coding, so that blocks containing samples of voxels that are visible in both views are more error-resiliently coded in one view only, given adaptive blending will erase errors in the other view. Further, synthesized view distortion sensitivities to texture versus depth errors are analyzed, so that relative importance of texture and depth code blocks can be computed for system-wide RPS optimization. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can outperform the use of a traditional feedback channel by up to 0.82 dB on average at 8% packet loss rate, and by as much as 3 dB for particular frames