Low power techniques for video compression

This paper gives an overview of low-power techniques proposed in the literature for mobile multimedia and Internet applications. Exploitable aspects are discussed in the behavior of different video compression tools. These power-efficient solutions are then classified by synthesis domain and level of abstraction. As this paper is meant to be a starting point for further research in the area, a lowpower hardware & software co-design methodology is outlined in the end as a possible scenario for video-codec-on-a-chip implementations on future mobile multimedia platforms

IPEA: the digital archive use case

Now is the time to migrate tape-based media archives to digital file-based archives for television broadcasters. These archives not only address the issue of tape-deterioration, they also create new possibilities for opening up the archive. However, the switch from tape-based to file-based is something only the very big television broadcasters can manage individually. Outer- broadcasters should work together to accomplish this task. In the Flemish part of Belgium, the two largest broadcasters in Flanders, namely the commercial broadcaster VMMa and the public broadcaster VRT, the television facilities supporting company Videohouse, and different university research groups associated with the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology joined forces and started the "Innovative Platform on Electronic Archiving" project. The goal of this project is to develop common standards for the exchange and archiving of audio-visual data. In this paper, we give a detailed overview of this project and its different research topics

Initiating a Mexican wave: An instantaneous collective decision with both short and long range interactions

An interesting example for collective decision making is the so-called Mexican wave during which the spectators in a stadium leap to their feet with their arms up and then sit down again following those to their left (right) with a small delay. Here we use a simple, but realistic model to explain how the combination of the local and global interactions of the spectators produces a breaking of the symmetry resulting in the replacement of the symmetric solution -- containing two propagating waves -- by a single wave moving in one of the two possible directions. Our model is based on and compared to the extensive observations of volunteers filling out the related questionnaire we have posted on the Internet. We find that, as a function of the parameter controlling the strength of the global interactions, the transition to the single wave solution has features reminiscent of discontinuous transitions. After the spontaneous symmetry breaking the two directions of propagation are still statistically equivalent. We investigate also how this remaining symmetry is broken in real stadia by a small asymmetrical term in the perception of spectators.Comment: Main text: 12 pages, 3 figures. Appendices: 18 pages (incl. answers from online survey on Mexican waves). Supplementary website: http://angel.elte.hu/localgloba

COSMOS-7: Video-oriented MPEG-7 scheme for modelling and filtering of semantic content

MPEG-7 prescribes a format for semantic content models for multimedia to ensure interoperability across a multitude of platforms and application domains. However, the standard leaves it open as to how the models should be used and how their content should be filtered. Filtering is a technique used to retrieve only content relevant to user requirements, thereby reducing the necessary content-sifting effort of the user. This paper proposes an MPEG-7 scheme that can be deployed for semantic content modelling and filtering of digital video. The proposed scheme, COSMOS-7, produces rich and multi-faceted semantic content models and supports a content-based filtering approach that only analyses content relating directly to the preferred content requirements of the user