Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

Video processing for panoramic streaming using HEVC and its scalable extensions

Panoramic streaming is a particular way of video streaming where an arbitrary Region-of-Interest (RoI) is transmitted from a high-spatial resolution video, i.e. a video covering a very “wide-angle” (much larger than the human field-of-view – e.g. 360°). Some transport schemes for panoramic video delivery have been proposed and demonstrated within the past decade, which allow users to navigate interactively within the high-resolution videos. With the recent advances of head mounted displays, consumers may soon have immersive and sufficiently convenient end devices at reach, which could lead to an increasing demand for panoramic video experiences. The solution proposed within this paper is built upon tile-based panoramic streaming, where users receive a set of tiles that match their RoI, and consists in a low-complexity compressed domain video processing technique for using H.265/HEVC and its scalable extensions (H.265/SHVC and H.265/MV-HEVC). The proposed technique generates a single video bitstream out of the selected tiles so that a single hardware decoder can be used. It overcomes the scalability issue of previous solutions not using tiles and the battery consumption issue inherent of tile-based panorama streaming, where multiple parallel software decoders are used. In addition, the described technique is capable of reducing peak streaming bitrate during changes of the RoI, which is crucial for allowing a truly immersive and low latency video experience. Besides, it makes it possible to use Open GOP structures without incurring any playback interruption at switching events, which provides a better compression efficiency compared to closed GOP structures

Web 3D for Public, Environmental and Occupational Health: Early Examples from Second Life®

Over the past three years (2006-2008), the medical/health and public health communities have shown a growing interest in using online 3D virtual worlds like Second Life® (http://secondlife.com/) for health education, community outreach, training and simulations purposes. 3D virtual worlds are seen as the precursors of ‘Web 3D’, the next major iteration of the Internet that will follow in the coming years. This paper provides a tour of several flagship Web 3D experiences in Second Life®, including Play2Train Islands (emergency preparedness training), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—CDC Island (public health), Karuna Island (AIDS support and information), Tox Town at Virtual NLM Island (US National Library of Medicine - environmental health), and Jefferson’s Occupational Therapy Center. We also discuss the potential and future of Web 3D. These are still early days of 3D virtual worlds, and there are still many more untapped potentials and affordances of 3D virtual worlds that are yet to be explored, as the technology matures further and improves over the coming months and years

MASCOT : metadata for advanced scalable video coding tools : final report

The goal of the MASCOT project was to develop new video coding schemes and tools that provide both an increased coding efficiency as well as extended scalability features compared to technology that was available at the beginning of the project. Towards that goal the following tools would be used: - metadata-based coding tools; - new spatiotemporal decompositions; - new prediction schemes. Although the initial goal was to develop one single codec architecture that was able to combine all new coding tools that were foreseen when the project was formulated, it became clear that this would limit the selection of the new tools. Therefore the consortium decided to develop two codec frameworks within the project, a standard hybrid DCT-based codec and a 3D wavelet-based codec, which together are able to accommodate all tools developed during the course of the project

Web 3D for Public, Environmental and Occupational Health: Early Examples from Second Life®

Over the past three years (2006–2008), the medical/health and public health communities have shown a growing interest in using online 3D virtual worlds like Second Life® (http://secondlife.com/) for health education, community outreach, training and simulations purposes. 3D virtual worlds are seen as the precursors of ‘Web 3D’, the next major iteration of the Internet that will follow in the coming years. This paper provides a tour of several flagship Web 3D experiences in Second Life®, including Play2Train Islands (emergency preparedness training), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—CDC Island (public health), Karuna Island (AIDS support and information), Tox Town at Virtual NLM Island (US National Library of Medicine - environmental health), and Jefferson’s Occupational Therapy Center. We also discuss the potential and future of Web 3D. These are still early days of 3D virtual worlds, and there are still many more untapped potentials and affordances of 3D virtual worlds that are yet to be explored, as the technology matures further and improves over the coming months and years

Linux-Box: DVB and VoD streaming over local area networks

Aquest treball tracta sobre un projecte comú anomenat Linux-Box portat a terme per diferents persones al departament de Telecomunicacions (IET) de la Universitat de Pisa. Linux-Box és un sistema dotat amb targetes TDT (DVB-T) i de televisió per satèl·lit (DVB-S) que permet transmetre aquests senyals fins a un àmbit domèstic. Més endavant podria ser utilitzat en àmbits privats com les cases de clients o en institucions públiques com escoles, universitats, biblioteques i també seria possible en àmbits empresarials. El projecte està dividit en 4 apartats: 1. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. Explica perquè s’utilitza Ubuntu en el projecte. A més també s’explica de forma breu que és Linux i les distribucions més utilitzades. 2. Multimedia Network Protocols: s’expliquen els diferents protocols desde la capa de xarxa fins la capa d’aplicació que s’utilitzen en el projecte Linux-Box. Aquests protocols són utilitzats tant en streaming, com en anunciació, unicast/multicast, encapsulat de vídeo i codecs. Els diversos temes tractats aquí es fan amb el propòsit de comparar i no només com a recerca teòrica. A la fi es veuen els programes utilitzats en el projecte per analitzar el tràfic de la xarxa. 3. Linux-Box: s’explica el funcionament i els objectius globals del projecte. Es dedica un sub-apartat a “VideoLan - VLC” part important a nivell de sofware. Més endavant es parla de les característiques de la Linux-Box de forma acurada: streaming de VoD i senyals de TV i s’analitzen els problemes coneguts i les seves solucions proposades. A la fi s’enumeren els llenguatges de programació utilitzats al projecte i en quina part s’utilitzen. Observarem que és una aplicació on diversos llenguatges de programació estan contínuament solapats. 4. Developed Part: es posa en pràctica la teoria estudiada a la resta del treball. Està dividida en 4 seccions: Desenvolupar una aplicació en codi C per convertir la llista de Canals (tant terrestre com de satèl·lit) en format XML. Una secció dedicada al streaming de Canals de TV a la pàgina web principal. Un anàlisis profund dels paquets creats per la Linux-Box i la seva activitat a la xarxa. Finalment s’analitzen els diferents scripts i les seves configuracions. Alguns són útils per a un futur desenvolupament i d’altres s’utilitzen en seccions prèvies. 5. Conclusions: conté les conclusions i línies futures. El projecte compta amb diverses opcions que encara poden ser implementades i estudiades. Aquí exposem les nostres interpretacions i possibles línies futures d’estudi

Description-driven Adaptation of Media Resources

The current multimedia landscape is characterized by a significant diversity in terms of available media formats, network technologies, and device properties. This heterogeneity has resulted in a number of new challenges, such as providing universal access to multimedia content. A solution for this diversity is the use of scalable bit streams, as well as the deployment of a complementary system that is capable of adapting scalable bit streams to the constraints imposed by a particular usage environment (e.g., the limited screen resolution of a mobile device). This dissertation investigates the use of an XML-driven (Extensible Markup Language) framework for the format-independent adaptation of scalable bit streams. Using this approach, the structure of a bit stream is first translated into an XML description. In a next step, the resulting XML description is transformed to reflect a desired adaptation of the bit stream. Finally, the transformed XML description is used to create an adapted bit stream that is suited for playback in the targeted usage environment. The main contribution of this dissertation is BFlavor, a new tool for exposing the syntax of binary media resources as an XML description. Its development was inspired by two other technologies, i.e. MPEG-21 BSDL (Bitstream Syntax Description Language) and XFlavor (Formal Language for Audio-Visual Object Representation, extended with XML features). Although created from a different point of view, both languages offer solutions for translating the syntax of a media resource into an XML representation for further processing. BFlavor (BSDL+XFlavor) harmonizes the two technologies by combining their strengths and eliminating their weaknesses. The expressive power and performance of a BFlavor-based content adaptation chain, compared to tool chains entirely based on either BSDL or XFlavor, were investigated by several experiments. One series of experiments targeted the exploitation of multi-layered temporal scalability in H.264/AVC, paying particular attention to the use of sub-sequences and hierarchical coding patterns, as well as to the use of metadata messages to communicate the bit stream structure to the adaptation logic. BFlavor was the only tool to offer an elegant and practical solution for XML-driven adaptation of H.264/AVC bit streams in the temporal domain

Linux-Box: DVB and VoD streaming over local area networks

Aquest treball tracta sobre un projecte comú anomenat Linux-Box portat a terme per diferents persones al departament de Telecomunicacions (IET) de la Universitat de Pisa. Linux-Box és un sistema dotat amb targetes TDT (DVB-T) i de televisió per satèl·lit (DVB-S) que permet transmetre aquests senyals fins a un àmbit domèstic. Més endavant podria ser utilitzat en àmbits privats com les cases de clients o en institucions públiques com escoles, universitats, biblioteques i també seria possible en àmbits empresarials. El projecte està dividit en 4 apartats: 1. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. Explica perquè s’utilitza Ubuntu en el projecte. A més també s’explica de forma breu que és Linux i les distribucions més utilitzades. 2. Multimedia Network Protocols: s’expliquen els diferents protocols desde la capa de xarxa fins la capa d’aplicació que s’utilitzen en el projecte Linux-Box. Aquests protocols són utilitzats tant en streaming, com en anunciació, unicast/multicast, encapsulat de vídeo i codecs. Els diversos temes tractats aquí es fan amb el propòsit de comparar i no només com a recerca teòrica. A la fi es veuen els programes utilitzats en el projecte per analitzar el tràfic de la xarxa. 3. Linux-Box: s’explica el funcionament i els objectius globals del projecte. Es dedica un sub-apartat a “VideoLan - VLC” part important a nivell de sofware. Més endavant es parla de les característiques de la Linux-Box de forma acurada: streaming de VoD i senyals de TV i s’analitzen els problemes coneguts i les seves solucions proposades. A la fi s’enumeren els llenguatges de programació utilitzats al projecte i en quina part s’utilitzen. Observarem que és una aplicació on diversos llenguatges de programació estan contínuament solapats. 4. Developed Part: es posa en pràctica la teoria estudiada a la resta del treball. Està dividida en 4 seccions:  Desenvolupar una aplicació en codi C per convertir la llista de Canals (tant terrestre com de satèl·lit) en format XML.  Una secció dedicada al streaming de Canals de TV a la pàgina web principal.  Un anàlisis profund dels paquets creats per la Linux-Box i la seva activitat a la xarxa.  Finalment s’analitzen els diferents scripts i les seves configuracions. Alguns són útils per a un futur desenvolupament i d’altres s’utilitzen en seccions prèvies. 5. Conclusions: conté les conclusions i línies futures. El projecte compta amb diverses opcions que encara poden ser implementades i estudiades. Aquí exposem les nostres interpretacions i possibles línies futures d’estudi