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

Segmentation-based mesh design for motion estimation

Dans la plupart des codec vidéo standard, l'estimation des mouvements entre deux images se fait généralement par l'algorithme de concordance des blocs ou encore BMA pour « Block Matching Algorithm ». BMA permet de représenter l'évolution du contenu des images en décomposant normalement une image par blocs 2D en mouvement translationnel. Cette technique de prédiction conduit habituellement à de sévères distorsions de 1'artefact de bloc lorsque Ie mouvement est important. De plus, la décomposition systématique en blocs réguliers ne dent pas compte nullement du contenu de l'image. Certains paramètres associes aux blocs, mais inutiles, doivent être transmis; ce qui résulte d'une augmentation de débit de transmission. Pour paillier a ces défauts de BMA, on considère les deux objectifs importants dans Ie codage vidéo, qui sont de recevoir une bonne qualité d'une part et de réduire la transmission a très bas débit d'autre part. Dans Ie but de combiner les deux exigences quasi contradictoires, il est nécessaire d'utiliser une technique de compensation de mouvement qui donne, comme transformation, de bonnes caractéristiques subjectives et requiert uniquement, pour la transmission, l'information de mouvement. Ce mémoire propose une technique de compensation de mouvement en concevant des mailles 2D triangulaires a partir d'une segmentation de l'image. La décomposition des mailles est construite a partir des nœuds repartis irrégulièrement Ie long des contours dans l'image. La décomposition résultant est ainsi basée sur Ie contenu de l'image. De plus, étant donné la même méthode de sélection des nœuds appliquée à l'encodage et au décodage, la seule information requise est leurs vecteurs de mouvement et un très bas débit de transmission peut ainsi être réalise. Notre approche, comparée avec BMA, améliore à la fois la qualité subjective et objective avec beaucoup moins d'informations de mouvement. Dans la premier chapitre, une introduction au projet sera présentée. Dans Ie deuxième chapitre, on analysera quelques techniques de compression dans les codec standard et, surtout, la populaire BMA et ses défauts. Dans Ie troisième chapitre, notre algorithme propose et appelé la conception active des mailles a base de segmentation, sera discute en détail. Ensuite, les estimation et compensation de mouvement seront décrites dans Ie chapitre 4. Finalement, au chapitre 5, les résultats de simulation et la conclusion seront présentés.Abstract: In most video compression standards today, the generally accepted method for temporal prediction is motion compensation using block matching algorithm (BMA). BMA represents the scene content evolution with 2-D rigid translational moving blocks. This kind of predictive scheme usually leads to distortions such as block artefacts especially when the motion is important. The two most important aims in video coding are to receive a good quality on one hand and a low bit-rate on the other. This thesis proposes a motion compensation scheme using segmentation-based 2-D triangular mesh design method. The mesh is constructed by irregularly spread nodal points selected along image contour. Based on this, the generated mesh is, to a great extent, image content based. Moreover, the nodes are selected with the same method on the encoder and decoder sides, so that the only information that has to be transmitted are their motion vectors, and thus very low bit-rate can be achieved. Compared with BMA, our approach could improve subjective and objective quality with much less motion information."--Résumé abrégé par UM

Design And Implementation Of Fast Motion Estimation In Modern Video Compression On GPU

Motion estimation is the most compute expensive part of high definition video compression. It accounts for more than 50\% of overall execution. Therefore, improving the performance of motion estimation can make significant impact on the overall performance of video compression. The performance of motion estimation can be improved in two aspects: algorithm and implementation. This thesis touches both aspects. We first propose an innovative motion estimation algorithm by replacing the traditional block matching method which comparing blocks pixel by pixel with a brand new method which based on lbp (local binary pattern) code. Our new method first encodes the original video frames into lbp code and then compares the blocks only using the lbp code. Our algorithm reduces the amount of computation significantly by avoiding many pixel by pixel comparisons present in traditional block matching approaches. Using public benchmarks our experiments show our proposed motion estimation algorithm runs 5 times faster than a traditional algorithm. Furthermore, we accelerate our proposed algorithm on gpus. Motion estimation processes of all blocks are offloaded to gpu and accelerated in parallel. Our gpu implementation runs 9 times faster than cpu implementation

Efficient HEVC-based video adaptation using transcoding

In a video transmission system, it is important to take into account the great diversity of the network/end-user constraints. On the one hand, video content is typically streamed over a network that is characterized by different bandwidth capacities. In many cases, the bandwidth is insufficient to transfer the video at its original quality. On the other hand, a single video is often played by multiple devices like PCs, laptops, and cell phones. Obviously, a single video would not satisfy their different constraints. These diversities of the network and devices capacity lead to the need for video adaptation techniques, e.g., a reduction of the bit rate or spatial resolution. Video transcoding, which modifies a property of the video without the change of the coding format, has been well-known as an efficient adaptation solution. However, this approach comes along with a high computational complexity, resulting in huge energy consumption in the network and possibly network latency. This presentation provides several optimization strategies for the transcoding process of HEVC (the latest High Efficiency Video Coding standard) video streams. First, the computational complexity of a bit rate transcoder (transrater) is reduced. We proposed several techniques to speed-up the encoder of a transrater, notably a machine-learning-based approach and a novel coding-mode evaluation strategy have been proposed. Moreover, the motion estimation process of the encoder has been optimized with the use of decision theory and the proposed fast search patterns. Second, the issues and challenges of a spatial transcoder have been solved by using machine-learning algorithms. Thanks to their great performance, the proposed techniques are expected to significantly help HEVC gain popularity in a wide range of modern multimedia applications

Surveillance centric coding

PhDThe research work presented in this thesis focuses on the development of techniques specific to surveillance videos for efficient video compression with higher processing speed. The Scalable Video Coding (SVC) techniques are explored to achieve higher compression efficiency. The framework of SVC is modified to support Surveillance Centric Coding (SCC). Motion estimation techniques specific to surveillance videos are proposed in order to speed up the compression process of the SCC. The main contributions of the research work presented in this thesis are divided into two groups (i) Efficient Compression and (ii) Efficient Motion Estimation. The paradigm of Surveillance Centric Coding (SCC) is introduced, in which coding aims to achieve bit-rate optimisation and adaptation of surveillance videos for storing and transmission purposes. In the proposed approach the SCC encoder communicates with the Video Content Analysis (VCA) module that detects events of interest in video captured by the CCTV. Bit-rate optimisation and adaptation are achieved by exploiting the scalability properties of the employed codec. Time segments containing events relevant to surveillance application are encoded using high spatiotemporal resolution and quality while the irrelevant portions from the surveillance standpoint are encoded at low spatio-temporal resolution and / or quality. Thanks to the scalability of the resulting compressed bit-stream, additional bit-rate adaptation is possible; for instance for the transmission purposes. Experimental evaluation showed that significant reduction in bit-rate can be achieved by the proposed approach without loss of information relevant to surveillance applications. In addition to more optimal compression strategy, novel approaches to performing efficient motion estimation specific to surveillance videos are proposed and implemented with experimental results. A real-time background subtractor is used to detect the presence of any motion activity in the sequence. Different approaches for selective motion estimation, GOP based, Frame based and Block based, are implemented. In the former, motion estimation is performed for the whole group of pictures (GOP) only when a moving object is detected for any frame of the GOP. iii While for the Frame based approach; each frame is tested for the motion activity and consequently for selective motion estimation. The selective motion estimation approach is further explored at a lower level as Block based selective motion estimation. Experimental evaluation showed that significant reduction in computational complexity can be achieved by applying the proposed strategy. In addition to selective motion estimation, a tracker based motion estimation and fast full search using multiple reference frames has been proposed for the surveillance videos. Extensive testing on different surveillance videos shows benefits of application of proposed approaches to achieve the goals of the SCC

Tensor-based regression models and applications

Tableau d’honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, 2017-2018Avec l’avancement des technologies modernes, les tenseurs d’ordre élevé sont assez répandus et abondent dans un large éventail d’applications telles que la neuroscience informatique, la vision par ordinateur, le traitement du signal et ainsi de suite. La principale raison pour laquelle les méthodes de régression classiques ne parviennent pas à traiter de façon appropriée des tenseurs d’ordre élevé est due au fait que ces données contiennent des informations structurelles multi-voies qui ne peuvent pas être capturées directement par les modèles conventionnels de régression vectorielle ou matricielle. En outre, la très grande dimensionnalité de l’entrée tensorielle produit une énorme quantité de paramètres, ce qui rompt les garanties théoriques des approches de régression classique. De plus, les modèles classiques de régression se sont avérés limités en termes de difficulté d’interprétation, de sensibilité au bruit et d’absence d’unicité. Pour faire face à ces défis, nous étudions une nouvelle classe de modèles de régression, appelés modèles de régression tensor-variable, où les prédicteurs indépendants et (ou) les réponses dépendantes prennent la forme de représentations tensorielles d’ordre élevé. Nous les appliquons également dans de nombreuses applications du monde réel pour vérifier leur efficacité et leur efficacité.With the advancement of modern technologies, high-order tensors are quite widespread and abound in a broad range of applications such as computational neuroscience, computer vision, signal processing and so on. The primary reason that classical regression methods fail to appropriately handle high-order tensors is due to the fact that those data contain multiway structural information which cannot be directly captured by the conventional vector-based or matrix-based regression models, causing substantial information loss during the regression. Furthermore, the ultrahigh dimensionality of tensorial input produces huge amount of parameters, which breaks the theoretical guarantees of classical regression approaches. Additionally, the classical regression models have also been shown to be limited in terms of difficulty of interpretation, sensitivity to noise and absence of uniqueness. To deal with these challenges, we investigate a novel class of regression models, called tensorvariate regression models, where the independent predictors and (or) dependent responses take the form of high-order tensorial representations. We also apply them in numerous real-world applications to verify their efficiency and effectiveness. Concretely, we first introduce hierarchical Tucker tensor regression, a generalized linear tensor regression model that is able to handle potentially much higher order tensor input. Then, we work on online local Gaussian process for tensor-variate regression, an efficient nonlinear GPbased approach that can process large data sets at constant time in a sequential way. Next, we present a computationally efficient online tensor regression algorithm with general tensorial input and output, called incremental higher-order partial least squares, for the setting of infinite time-dependent tensor streams. Thereafter, we propose a super-fast sequential tensor regression framework for general tensor sequences, namely recursive higher-order partial least squares, which addresses issues of limited storage space and fast processing time allowed by dynamic environments. Finally, we introduce kernel-based multiblock tensor partial least squares, a new generalized nonlinear framework that is capable of predicting a set of tensor blocks by merging a set of tensor blocks from different sources with a boosted predictive power

Real Time Motion Estimation Algorithm for Temporal Denoising

This thesis introduces a low-complexity, but efficient, motion estimation algorithm, that could be implemented in FPGA, in a professional digital camera to apply it on-the-fly while recording a video-sequence.The main aim of the proposed algorithm it to improve the performance of an already existing denoising algorithm. To meet the real-time constraint, the prediction accuracy is traded for a reduced number of operations that is reflected in a faster computational time