17 research outputs found
Algorithms & implementation of advanced video coding standards
Advanced video coding standards have become widely deployed coding techniques used in numerous products, such as broadcast, video conference, mobile television and blu-ray disc, etc. New compression techniques are gradually included in video coding standards so that a 50% compression rate reduction is achievable every five years. However, the trend also has brought many problems, such as, dramatically increased computational complexity, co-existing multiple standards and gradually increased development time. To solve the above problems, this thesis intends to investigate efficient algorithms for the latest video coding standard, H.264/AVC. Two aspects of H.264/AVC standard are inspected in this thesis: (1) Speeding up intra4x4 prediction with parallel architecture. (2) Applying an efficient rate control algorithm based on deviation measure to intra frame. Another aim of this thesis is to work on low-complexity algorithms for MPEG-2 to H.264/AVC transcoder. Three main mapping algorithms and a computational complexity reduction algorithm are focused by this thesis: motion vector mapping, block mapping, field-frame mapping and efficient modes ranking algorithms. Finally, a new video coding framework methodology to reduce development time is examined. This thesis explores the implementation of MPEG-4 simple profile with the RVC framework. A key technique of automatically generating variable length decoder table is solved in this thesis. Moreover, another important video coding standard, DV/DVCPRO, is further modeled by RVC framework. Consequently, besides the available MPEG-4 simple profile and China audio/video standard, a new member is therefore added into the RVC framework family. A part of the research work presented in this thesis is targeted algorithms and implementation of video coding standards. In the wide topic, three main problems are investigated. The results show that the methodologies presented in this thesis are efficient and encourage
An Efficient Motion Estimation Method for H.264-Based Video Transcoding with Arbitrary Spatial Resolution Conversion
As wireless and wired network connectivity is rapidly expanding
and the number of network users is steadily increasing, it has become more
and more important to support universal access of multimedia
content over the whole network. A big challenge, however, is
the great diversity of network devices from full screen computers
to small smart phones. This leads to research on transcoding,
which involves in efficiently reformatting compressed data from
its original high resolution to a desired spatial resolution
supported by the displaying device. Particularly, there is a
great momentum in the multimedia industry for H.264-based
transcoding as H.264 has been widely employed as a mandatory
player feature in applications ranging from television broadcast
to video for mobile devices.
While H.264 contains many new features for effective video
coding with excellent rate distortion (RD) performance, a major issue
for transcoding H.264 compressed video from one spatial resolution
to another is the computational complexity. Specifically, it is
the motion compensated prediction (MCP) part. MCP is the main
contributor to the excellent RD performance
of H.264 video compression, yet it is very time consuming. In general,
a brute-force search is used to find the best motion vectors for MCP.
In the scenario of transcoding, however, an immediate idea for
improving the MCP efficiency for the re-encoding procedure is to
utilize the motion vectors in the original compressed stream.
Intuitively, motion in the high resolution scene is highly related
to that in the down-scaled scene.
In this thesis, we study homogeneous video transcoding from H.264
to H.264. Specifically, for the video transcoding with arbitrary
spatial resolution conversion, we propose a motion vector estimation
algorithm based on a multiple linear regression model, which
systematically utilizes the motion information in the original scenes.
We also propose a practical solution for efficiently determining a
reference frame to take the advantage of the new feature of multiple
references in H.264. The performance of the algorithm was assessed
in an H.264 transcoder. Experimental results show that, as compared
with a benchmark solution, the proposed method significantly reduces
the transcoding complexity without degrading much the video quality
Advanced heterogeneous video transcoding
PhDVideo transcoding is an essential tool to promote inter-operability
between different video communication systems. This thesis presents
two novel video transcoders, both operating on bitstreams of the cur-
rent H.264/AVC standard. The first transcoder converts H.264/AVC
bitstreams to a Wavelet Scalable Video Codec (W-SVC), while the second targets the emerging High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).
Scalable Video Coding (SVC) enables low complexity adaptation
of compressed video, providing an efficient solution for content delivery
through heterogeneous networks. The transcoder proposed here aims at
exploiting the advantages offered by SVC technology when dealing with
conventional coders and legacy video, efficiently reusing information
found in the H.264/AVC bitstream to achieve a high rate-distortion
performance at a low complexity cost. Its main features include new
mode mapping algorithms that exploit the W-SVC larger macroblock
sizes, and a new state-of-the-art motion vector composition algorithm
that is able to tackle different coding configurations in the H.264/AVC
bitstream, including IPP or IBBP with multiple reference frames.
The emerging video coding standard, HEVC, is currently approaching the final stage of development prior to standardization. This thesis
proposes and evaluates several transcoding algorithms for the HEVC
codec. In particular, a transcoder based on a new method that is capable of complexity scalability, trading off rate-distortion performance
for complexity reduction, is proposed. Furthermore, other transcoding solutions are explored, based on a novel content-based modeling
approach, in which the transcoder adapts its parameters based on the
contents of the sequence being encoded.
Finally, the application of this research is not constrained to these
transcoders, as many of the techniques developed aim to contribute
to advance the research on this field, and have the potential to be
incorporated in different video transcoding architectures
An Efficient Algorithm for VC-1 to H.264 Video Transcoding in Progressive Compression
The high definition video adoption has been growing rapidly for the last two years. The two high definition DVD formats HD-DVD and Blueray have mandated MPEG-2, H.264 and VC-1 as video compression formats. The coexistence of these different video coding standards creates a need for transcoding. In this paper, an efficient transcoding algorithm from VC-1 video to H.264 video is discussed. While there has been recent work on MPEG-2 to H.264 transcoding, the published work on VC-1 to H.264 transcoding is non-existent. There is very limited amount of published work on VC-1. This paper gives a brief overview of VC-1 and discusses the opportunities for low-complexit
A parallel H.264/SVC encoder for high definition video conferencing
In this paper we present a video encoder specially developed and configured for high definition (HD) video conferencing. This video encoder brings together the following three requirements: H.264/Scalable Video Coding (SVC), parallel encoding on multicore platforms, and parallel-friendly rate control. With the first requirement, a minimum quality of service to every end-user receiver over Internet Protocol networks is guaranteed. With the second one, real-time execution is accomplished and, for this purpose, slice-level parallelism, for the main encoding loop, and block-level parallelism, for the upsampling and interpolation filtering processes, are combined. With the third one, a proper HD video content delivery under certain bit rate and end-to-end delay constraints is ensured. The experimental results prove that the proposed H.264/SVC video encoder is able to operate in real time over a wide range of target bit rates at the expense of reasonable losses in rate-distortion efficiency due to the frame partitioning into slices
Efficient algorithms for scalable video coding
A scalable video bitstream specifically designed for the needs of various client terminals,
network conditions, and user demands is much desired in current and future video transmission
and storage systems. The scalable extension of the H.264/AVC standard (SVC) has
been developed to satisfy the new challenges posed by heterogeneous environments, as
it permits a single video stream to be decoded fully or partially with variable quality, resolution,
and frame rate in order to adapt to a specific application. This thesis presents
novel improved algorithms for SVC, including: 1) a fast inter-frame and inter-layer coding
mode selection algorithm based on motion activity; 2) a hierarchical fast mode selection
algorithm; 3) a two-part Rate Distortion (RD) model targeting the properties of different
prediction modes for the SVC rate control scheme; and 4) an optimised Mean Absolute
Difference (MAD) prediction model.
The proposed fast inter-frame and inter-layer mode selection algorithm is based on the
empirical observation that a macroblock (MB) with slow movement is more likely to be
best matched by one in the same resolution layer. However, for a macroblock with fast
movement, motion estimation between layers is required. Simulation results show that
the algorithm can reduce the encoding time by up to 40%, with negligible degradation in
RD performance.
The proposed hierarchical fast mode selection scheme comprises four levels and makes
full use of inter-layer, temporal and spatial correlation aswell as the texture information of
each macroblock. Overall, the new technique demonstrates the same coding performance
in terms of picture quality and compression ratio as that of the SVC standard, yet produces
a saving in encoding time of up to 84%. Compared with state-of-the-art SVC fast mode
selection algorithms, the proposed algorithm achieves a superior computational time reduction
under very similar RD performance conditions.
The existing SVC rate distortion model cannot accurately represent the RD properties of
the prediction modes, because it is influenced by the use of inter-layer prediction. A separate
RD model for inter-layer prediction coding in the enhancement layer(s) is therefore
introduced. Overall, the proposed algorithms improve the average PSNR by up to 0.34dB
or produce an average saving in bit rate of up to 7.78%. Furthermore, the control accuracy
is maintained to within 0.07% on average.
As aMADprediction error always exists and cannot be avoided, an optimisedMADprediction
model for the spatial enhancement layers is proposed that considers the MAD from
previous temporal frames and previous spatial frames together, to achieve a more accurateMADprediction.
Simulation results indicate that the proposedMADprediction model
reduces the MAD prediction error by up to 79% compared with the JVT-W043 implementation
H.264/AVC inter prediction on accelerator-based multi-core systems
The AVC video coding standard adopts variable block sizes for inter frame coding to increase compression efficiency, among other new features. As a consequence of this, an AVC encoder has to employ a complex mode decision technique that requires high computational complexity. Several techniques aimed at accelerating the inter prediction process have been proposed in the literature in recent years. Recently, with the emergence of many-core processors or accelerators, a new way of supporting inter frame prediction has presented itself. In this paper, we present a step forward in the implementation of an AVC inter prediction algorithm in a graphics processing unit, using Compute Unified Device Architecture. The results show a negligible drop in rate distortion with a time reduction, on average, of over 98.8 % compared with full search and fast full search, and of over 80 % compared with UMHexagonS search
Video Stream Adaptation In Computer Vision Systems
Computer Vision (CV) has been deployed recently in a wide range of applications, including surveillance and automotive industries. According to a recent report, the market for CV technologies will grow to $33.3 billion by 2019. Surveillance and automotive industries share over 20% of this market. This dissertation considers the design of real-time CV systems with live video streaming, especially those over wireless and mobile networks. Such systems include video cameras/sensors and monitoring stations. The cameras should adapt their captured videos based on the events and/or available resources and time requirement. The monitoring station receives video streams from all cameras and run CV algorithms for decisions, warnings, control, and/or other actions. Real-time CV systems have constraints in power, computational, and communicational resources. Most video adaptation techniques considered the video distortion as the primary metric. In CV systems, however, the main objective is enhancing the event/object detection/recognition/tracking accuracy. The accuracy can essentially be thought of as the quality perceived by machines, as opposed to the human perceptual quality. High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a recent encoding standard that seeks to address the limited communication bandwidth problem as a result of the popularity of High Definition (HD) videos. Unfortunately, HEVC adopts algorithms that greatly slow down the encoding process, and thus results in complications in real-time systems.
This dissertation presents a method for adapting live video streams to limited and varying network bandwidth and energy resources. It analyzes and compares the rate-accuracy and rate-energy characteristics of various video streams adaptation techniques in CV systems. We model the video capturing, encoding, and transmission aspects and then provide an overall model of the power consumed by the video cameras and/or sensors. In addition to modeling the power consumption, we model the achieved bitrate of video encoding. We validate and analyze the power consumption models of each phase as well as the aggregate power consumption model through extensive experiments. The analysis includes examining individual parameters separately and examining the impacts of changing more than one parameter at a time. For HEVC, we develop an algorithm that predicts the size of the block without iterating through the exhaustive Rate Distortion Optimization (RDO) method. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in comparison with existing algorithms. The proposed algorithm achieves approximately 5 times the encoding speed of the RDO algorithm and 1.42 times the encoding speed of the fastest analyzed algorithm