Livrable D3.3 of the PERSEE project : 2D coding tools

49Livrable D3.3 du projet ANR PERSEECe rapport a été réalisé dans le cadre du projet ANR PERSEE (n° ANR-09-BLAN-0170). Exactement il correspond au livrable D3.3 du projet. Son titre : 2D coding tool

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

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

Motion compensation with minimal residue dispersion matching criteria

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnoloigia, 2016.Com a crescente demanda por serviços de vídeo, técnicas de compressão de vídeo tornaram-se uma tecnologia de importância central para os sistemas de comunicação modernos. Padrões para codificação de vídeo foram criados pela indústria, permitindo a integração entre esses serviços e os mais diversos dispositivos para acessá-los. A quase totalidade desses padrões adota um modelo de codificação híbrida, que combina métodos de codificação diferencial e de codificação por transformadas, utilizando a compensação de movimento por blocos (CMB) como técnica central na etapa de predição. O método CMB tornou-se a mais importante técnica para explorar a forte redundância temporal típica da maioria das sequências de vídeo. De fato, muito do aprimoramento em termos de e ciência na codificação de vídeo observado nas últimas duas décadas pode ser atribuído a refinamentos incrementais na técnica de CMB. Neste trabalho, apresentamos um novo refinamento a essa técnica. Uma questão central à abordagem de CMB é a estimação de movimento (EM), ou seja, a seleção de vetores de movimento (VM) apropriados. Padrões de codificação tendem a regular estritamente a sintaxe de codificação e os processos de decodificação para VM's e informação de resíduo, mas o algoritmo de EM em si é deixado a critério dos projetistas do codec. No entanto, embora praticamente qualquer critério de seleção permita uma decodi cação correta, uma seleção de VM criteriosa é vital para a e ciência global do codec, garantindo ao codi cador uma vantagem competitiva no mercado. A maioria do algoritmos de EM baseia-se na minimização de uma função de custo para os blocos candidatos a predição para um dado bloco alvo, geralmente a soma das diferenças absolutas (SDA) ou a soma das diferenças quadradas (SDQ). A minimização de qualquer uma dessas funções de custo selecionará a predição que resulta no menor resíduo, cada uma em um sentido diferente porém bem de nido. Neste trabalho, mostramos que a predição de mínima dispersão de resíduo é frequentemente mais e ciente que a tradicional predição com resíduo de mínimo tamanho. Como prova de conceito, propomos o algoritmo de duplo critério de correspondência (ADCC), um algoritmo simples em dois estágios para explorar ambos esses critérios de seleção em turnos. Estágios de minimização de dispersão e de minimização de tamanho são executadas independentemente. O codificador então compara o desempenho dessas predições em termos da relação taxa-distorção e efetivamente codifica somente a mais eficiente. Para o estágio de minimização de dispersão do ADCC, propomos ainda o desvio absoluto total com relação à média (DATM) como a medida de dispersão a ser minimizada no processo de EM. A tradicional SDA é utilizada como a função de custo para EM no estágio de minimização de tamanho. O ADCC com SDA/DATM foi implementado em uma versão modificada do software de referência JM para o amplamente difundido padrão H.264/AVC de codificação. Absoluta compatibilidade a esse padrão foi mantida, de forma que nenhuma modificação foi necessária no lado do decodificador. Os resultados mostram aprimoramentos significativos com relação ao codificador H.264/AVC não modificado.With the ever growing demand for video services, video compression techniques have become a technology of central importance for communication systems. Industry standards for video coding have emerged, allowing the integration between these services and the most diverse devices. The almost entirety of these standards adopt a hybrid coding model combining di erential and transform coding methods, with block-based motion compensation (BMC) at the core of its prediction step. The BMC method have become the single most important technique to exploit the strong temporal redundancy typical of most video sequences. In fact, much of the improvements in video coding e ciency over the past two decades can be attributed to incremental re nements to the BMC technique. In this work, we propose another such re nement. A key issue to the BMC framework is motion estimation (ME), i.e., the selection of appropriate motion vectors (MV). Coding standards tend to strictly regulate the coding syntax and decoding processes for MV's and residual information, but the ME algorithm itself is left at the discretion of the codec designers. However, though virtually any MV selection criterion will allow for correct decoding, judicious MV selection is critical to the overall codec performance, providing the encoder with a competitive edge in the market. Most ME algorithms rely on the minimization of a cost function for the candidate prediction blocks given a target block, usually the sum of absolute di erences (SAD) or the sum of squared di erences (SSD). The minimization of any of these cost functions will select the prediction that results in the smallest residual, each in a di erent but well de ned sense. In this work, we show that the prediction of minimal residue dispersion is frequently more e cient than the usual prediction of minimal residue size. As proof of concept, we propose the double matching criterion algorithm (DMCA), a simple two-pass algorithm to exploit both of these MV selection criteria in turns. Dispersion minimizing and size minimizing predictions are carried out independently. The encoder then compares these predictions in terms of rate-distortion performance and outputs only the most e cient one. For the dispersion minimizing pass of the DMCA, we also propose the total absolute deviation from the mean (TADM) as the measure of residue dispersion to be minimized in ME. The usual SAD is used as the ME cost function in the size minimizing pass. The DMCA with SAD/TADM was implemented in a modi ed version of the JM reference software encoder for the widely popular H.264/AVC coding standard. Absolute compliance to the standard was maintained, so that no modi cations on the decoder side were necessary. Results show signi cant improvements over the unmodi ed H.264/AVC encoder

Low complexity in-loop perceptual video coding

The tradition of broadcast video is today complemented with user generated content, as portable devices support video coding. Similarly, computing is becoming ubiquitous, where Internet of Things (IoT) incorporate heterogeneous networks to communicate with personal and/or infrastructure devices. Irrespective, the emphasises is on bandwidth and processor efficiencies, meaning increasing the signalling options in video encoding. Consequently, assessment for pixel differences applies uniform cost to be processor efficient, in contrast the Human Visual System (HVS) has non-uniform sensitivity based upon lighting, edges and textures. Existing perceptual assessments, are natively incompatible and processor demanding, making perceptual video coding (PVC) unsuitable for these environments. This research allows existing perceptual assessment at the native level using low complexity techniques, before producing new pixel-base image quality assessments (IQAs). To manage these IQAs a framework was developed and implemented in the high efficiency video coding (HEVC) encoder. This resulted in bit-redistribution, where greater bits and smaller partitioning were allocated to perceptually significant regions. Using a HEVC optimised processor the timing increase was < +4% and < +6% for video streaming and recording applications respectively, 1/3 of an existing low complexity PVC solution. Future work should be directed towards perceptual quantisation which offers the potential for perceptual coding gain

State of the art in 2D content representation and compression

Livrable D1.3 du projet ANR PERSEECe rapport a été réalisé dans le cadre du projet ANR PERSEE (n° ANR-09-BLAN-0170). Exactement il correspond au livrable D3.1 du projet

PEA265: Perceptual Assessment of Video Compression Artifacts

The most widely used video encoders share a common hybrid coding framework that includes block-based motion estimation/compensation and block-based transform coding. Despite their high coding efficiency, the encoded videos often exhibit visually annoying artifacts, denoted as Perceivable Encoding Artifacts (PEAs), which significantly degrade the visual Qualityof- Experience (QoE) of end users. To monitor and improve visual QoE, it is crucial to develop subjective and objective measures that can identify and quantify various types of PEAs. In this work, we make the first attempt to build a large-scale subjectlabelled database composed of H.265/HEVC compressed videos containing various PEAs. The database, namely the PEA265 database, includes 4 types of spatial PEAs (i.e. blurring, blocking, ringing and color bleeding) and 2 types of temporal PEAs (i.e. flickering and floating). Each containing at least 60,000 image or video patches with positive and negative labels. To objectively identify these PEAs, we train Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) using the PEA265 database. It appears that state-of-theart ResNeXt is capable of identifying each type of PEAs with high accuracy. Furthermore, we define PEA pattern and PEA intensity measures to quantify PEA levels of compressed video sequence. We believe that the PEA265 database and our findings will benefit the future development of video quality assessment methods and perceptually motivated video encoders.Comment: 10 pages,15 figures,4 table