Cost-Efficient Storage for On-Demand Video Streaming on Cloud

Video stream is converted to several formats to support the user's device, this conversion process is called video transcoding, which imposes high storage and powerful resources. With emerging of cloud technology, video stream companies adopted to process video on the cloud. Generally, many formats of the same video are made (pre-transcoded) and streamed to the adequate user's device. However, pre-transcoding demands huge storage space and incurs a high-cost to the video stream companies. More importantly, the pre-transcoding of video streams could be hierarchy carried out through different storage types in the cloud. To minimize the storage cost, in this paper, we propose a method to store video streams in the hierarchical storage of the cloud. Particularly, we develop a method to decide which video stream should be pre-transcoded in its suitable cloud storage to minimize the overall cost. Experimental simulation and results show the effectiveness of our approach, specifically, when the percentage of frequently accessed videos is high in repositories, the proposed approach minimizes the overall cost by up to 40 percent.Comment: International IEEE World Forum for Internet of Thing

Aproximaciones en la preparación de contenido de vídeo para la transmisión de vídeo bajo demanda (VOD) con DASH

El consumo de contenido multimedia a través de Internet, especialmente el vídeo, está experimentado un crecimiento constante, convirtiéndose en una actividad cotidiana entre individuos de todo el mundo. En este contexto, en los últimos años se han desarrollado numerosos estudios enfocados en la preparación, distribución y transmisión de contenido multimedia, especialmente en el ámbito del vídeo bajo demanda (VoD). Esta tesis propone diferentes contribuciones en el campo de la codificación de vídeo para VoD que será transmitido usando el estándar Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH). El objetivo es encontrar un equilibrio entre el uso eficiente de recursos computacionales y la garantía de ofrecer una calidad experiencia (QoE) alta para el espectador final. Como punto de partida, se ofrece un estudio exhaustivo sobre investigaciones relacionadas con técnicas de codificación y transcodificación de vídeo en la nube, enfocándose especialmente en la evolución del streaming y la relevancia del proceso de codificación. Además, se examinan las propuestas en función del tipo de virtualización y modalidades de entrega de contenido. Se desarrollan dos enfoques de codificación adaptativa basada en la calidad, con el objetivo de ajustar la calidad de toda la secuencia de vídeo a un nivel deseado. Los resultados indican que las soluciones propuestas pueden reducir el tamaño del vídeo manteniendo la misma calidad a lo largo de todos los segmentos del vídeo. Además, se propone una solución de codificación basada en escenas y se analiza el impacto de utilizar vídeo a baja resolución (downscaling) para detectar escenas en términos de tiempo, calidad y tamaño. Los resultados muestran que se reduce el tiempo total de codificación, el consumo de recursos computacionales y el tamaño del vídeo codificado. La investigación también presenta una arquitectura que paraleliza los trabajos involucrados en la preparación de contenido DASH utilizando el paradigma FaaS (Function-as-a-Service), en una plataforma serverless. Se prueba esta arquitectura con tres funciones encapsuladas en contenedores, para codificar y analizar la calidad de los vídeos, obteniendo resultados prometedores en términos de escalabilidad y distribución de trabajos. Finalmente, se crea una herramienta llamada VQMTK, que integra 14 métricas de calidad de vídeo en un contenedor con Docker, facilitando la evaluación de la calidad del vídeo en diversos entornos. Esta herramienta puede ser de gran utilidad en el ámbito de la codificación de vídeo, en la generación de conjuntos de datos para entrenar redes neuronales profundas y en entornos científicos como educativos. En resumen, la tesis ofrece soluciones y herramientas innovadoras para mejorar la eficiencia y la calidad en la preparación y transmisión de contenido multimedia en la nube, proporcionando una base sólida para futuras investigaciones y desarrollos en este campo que está en constante evolución.The consumption of multimedia content over the Internet, especially video, is growing steadily, becoming a daily activity among people around the world. In this context, several studies have been developed in recent years focused on the preparation, distribution, and transmission of multimedia content, especially in the field of video on demand (VoD). This thesis proposes different contributions in the field of video coding for transmission in VoD scenarios using Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) standard. The goal is to find a balance between the efficient use of computational resources and the guarantee of delivering a high-quality experience (QoE) for the end viewer. As a starting point, a comprehensive survey on research related to video encoding and transcoding techniques in the cloud is provided, focusing especially on the evolution of streaming and the relevance of the encoding process. In addition, proposals are examined as a function of the type of virtualization and content delivery modalities. Two quality-based adaptive coding approaches are developed with the objective of adjusting the quality of the entire video sequence to a desired level. The results indicate that the proposed solutions can reduce the video size while maintaining the same quality throughout all video segments. In addition, a scene-based coding solution is proposed and the impact of using downscaling video to detect scenes in terms of time, quality and size is analyzed. The results show that the required encoding time, computational resource consumption and the size of the encoded video are reduced. The research also presents an architecture that parallelizes the jobs involved in content preparation using the FaaS (Function-as-a-Service) paradigm, on a serverless platform. This architecture is tested with three functions encapsulated in containers, to encode and analyze the quality of the videos, obtaining promising results in terms of scalability and job distribution. Finally, a tool called VQMTK is developed, which integrates 14 video quality metrics in a container with Docker, facilitating the evaluation of video quality in various environments. This tool can be of great use in the field of video coding, in the generation of datasets to train deep neural networks, and in scientific environments such as educational. In summary, the thesis offers innovative solutions and tools to improve efficiency and quality in the preparation and transmission of multimedia content in the cloud, providing a solid foundation for future research and development in this constantly evolving field

Visualizing Transmedia Networks: Links, Paths and Peripheries

`Visualizing Transmedia Networks: Links, Paths and Peripheries' examines the increasingly complex rhetorical intersections between narrative and media (`old' and `new') in the creation of transmedia fictions, loosely defined as multisensory and multimodal stories told extensively across a diverse media set. In order to locate the `language' of transmedia expressions, this project calls attention to the formally locatable network structures placed by transmedia producers in disparate media like film, the print novel and video games. Using network visualization software and computational metrics, these structures can be used as data to graph these fictions for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. This study also, however, examines the limits to this approach, arguing that the process of transremediation, where redundancy and multiformity take precedence over networked connection, forms a second axis for understanding transmedia practices, one equally bound to the formation of new modes of meaning and literacy

Erasure

How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of erasure that provides a glimpse into the many directions that this question may take us, through the lens of a series of artistic interventions, academic research, experiments and artefacts. I present these items from a collector’s point of view. For achieving completion of this collection of erasures would be, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, like death. That is to say that the desire to complete the series, to achieve the perfection of its imaginary ending, is that which creates the elusive object of desire. As such, in the same way that a collection can always extend itself laterally, or spark a new one ([1968] 1996, 113), I am presenting it as an object of desire, fuelled by the impetus of neoliberal growth, which can never be complete and will forever expand into new meanings of execution, always towards the elusive erasure of death

Shrimping under working conditions

We propose that mutated forms of death are emerging with neoliberalism’s biopolitical financialisation of life. Thinking of such forms as commercial extinction and social death, how do we begin to frame these outside of a quantified rhetoric of surplus? These questions aim to provoke a discussion about these terms that can be interpreted as modes of exhaustion, while maintaining particular biological, social or economic conditions of life. When we are confronted with capitalism’s failure to fulfil resource exhaustion, a model of conservation by dispossession1 might emerge within what Rosi Braidotti calls “new and subtler degrees of death and extinction” (2013, 115). In this text we want to think with other conditions of death and extinction that can help to move beyond the missing item of an inventory, a carved rock along a fossil road or a set of pre-emptive actions to be executed beyond a certain threshold. Thus, we ask if there could be figures, which rather than narrating death as a biological or geological concept, open it up to other equally violent forces that are nevertheless materially situated. More importantly, will we ever be able to think of extinction beyond ideas of absence or frame death from social or economic realms as an emerging mode of living? In order to address many of these questions we dissect a critical example of extinction, that of the brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) as it flips between commercial (albeit not yet biotic) death in the ex-fishing grounds of the South East corner of the UK, and the social death embedded in the labour-power of the ex-processing factories of the Special Economic Zones of Tangier and Tetuan in Morocco

Data Browser 06: Executing Practices

This collection brings together artists, curators, programmers, theorists and heavy internet browsers whose practices make critical intervention into the broad concept of execution. It draws attention to their political strategies, asking: who and what is involved with those practices, and for whom or what are these practices performed, and how? From the contestable politics of emoji modifier mechanisms and micro-temporalities of computational processes to genomic exploitation and the curating of digital content, the chapters account for gendered, racialised, spatial, violent, erotic, artistic and other embedded forms of execution. Together they highlight a range of ways in which execution emerges and how it participates within networked forms of liveliness

Colonialisms, post-colonialisms and lusophonies: proceedings of the 4th International Congress in Cultural Studies

Colonialismos e pós-colonialismos são todos diferentes, mesmo quando referidos exclusivamente à situação lusófona. Neste contexto, mais do que procurar boas respostas, importa determinar quais as questões pertinentes aos nossos colonialismos e pós-colonialismos lusófonos. Com efeito, problematizar a própria questão é começar por descolonizar o pensamento. Em nosso entender, esta é uma das tarefas candentes no processo de re-imaginação da Lusofonia, que passa, atualmente, pela procura de um pensamento estratégico que inclua uma reflexão colonialista/pós-colonialista/descolonialista. Esta tarefa primeira, e mesmo propedêutica a qualquer construção gnoseológica, de descolonizar o pensamento hegemónico onde quer que ele se revele, não pode deixar de implicar as academias, centros de produção do saber e do conhecimento da realidade cultural, política e social. Neste sentido, descolonizar o pensamento sobre a Lusofonia passará por colocar em causa e instabilizar o que julgamos já saber e ser como ‘sujeitos lusófonos’, ‘países lusófonos’, ‘comunidades lusófonas’. Trata-se, assim, de instabilizar a uniformidade, mas também as diferenças instituídas, que frequentemente não são mais do que um novo género de cânone integrador e dissolvente da diferença. Por outro lado, não podemos deixar de praticar uma atitude vigilante, de cuidado e suspeição, em face do discurso sobre a diferença irredutível, que pode tornar-se (como no passado) na estéril celebração do exótico. Fazer com que a diferença instabilize o que oficialmente se encontra canonizado como ‘diferença dentro do cânone’, implica negociar e re-inscrever identidades sem inverter dualismos. Uma reflexão pós-colonial no contexto lusófono não pode evitar o exercício da crítica às antigas dicotomias periferia/centro; cosmopolitismo/ruralismo, civilizado/selvagem, negro/branco, norte/sul, num contexto cultural de mundialização, transformado por novos e revolucionários fenómenos de comunicação, que têm também globalizado a marginalidade. A tarefa de re-imaginar a Lusofonia implicará necessariamente a deslocação, inversão ou até implosão, do pensamento dual eurocêntrico, obrigando-nos a repensá-la dentro de uma mais vasta articulação entre local e global

Colonialisms, post-colonialisms and lusophonies: Proceedings of the 4th International Congress in Cultural Studies

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