Digital game elements, user experience and learning

The primary aim of this paper is to identify and theoretically validate the relationships between core game design elements and mechanics, user motivation and engagement and consequently learning. Additionally, it tries to highlight the moderating role of player personality traits on learning outcomes and acceptance and suggest ways to incorporate them in the game design process. To that end, it outlines the role of narrative, aesthetics and core game mechanics in facilitating higher learning outcomes through intrinsic motivation and engagement. At the same time, it discusses how player goal orientation, openness to experience, conscientiousness, sensation seeking and need for cognition influence the translation of the gameplay experience into valuable learning outcomes and user acceptance of the technology

Adaptive interpolation filter with flexible symmetry for coding high resolution high quality video

In this work, a novel sub-pixel interpolation algorithm is proposed for video coders targeted towards high resolution and high fidelity use cases. Proposed scheme is based on adapting the interpolation filter's symmetry assumptions in a Rate-Distortion-Optimized fashion, taking into account the coding rate and the statistical properties of each image of the video sequence. Experimental results show that, using, the proposed algorithm a gain of Up-to 1.1 dB is achieved compared to non-adaptive sub-pixel interpolation of H.264/AVC, Compared to other state-of-the-art adaptive sub-pixel interpolation methods, a gain of up-to 0.5 dB is achieved, Proposed scheme outperforms H.264/AVC for all test cases; however, improvement is more significant at high bitrates and at high resolutions. This is especially important for future video coding solutions targeting high fidelity video applications. © 2007 IEEE

Generating H.264/AVC compliant bitstreams for lightweight decoding operation suitable for mobile multimedia systems

In this work, we propose novel encoder algorithms for the state-of-the-art video coding standard H.264, to generate decoder friendly video bitstreams. Using the proposed algorithms, it is possible to generate bitstreams requiring significantly less decoding complexity, with negligible effect on picture quality. This is achieved by using novel algorithms for mode decision and motion estimation that bias easy-to-decode motion vectors in a Rate-Distortion optimized fashion. Experimental results show that, more than 15% decoding complexity reduction is achieved with less than a 0.1 dB penalty on the average video quality. We believe that this approach has potential in various use cases especially in mobile multimedia systems, where the video decoder operation is often dominating the handsets power consumption. © 2006 IEEE

Efficient Implementation of Adaptive Interpolation Filters for Low Complexity Video Coding

This paper presents novel methods for implementing adaptive interpolation filtering techniques for video coding on 16-bit integer architectures. The proposed methods offer significant complexity reduction over the state-of-the-art, making, them especially valuable for resource constrained mobile multimedia devices, with high coding efficiency.(1

Parallel encoding - Decoding operation for multiview video coding with high coding efficiency

Multiview Video Coding (MVC) standardization is an on-going effort aiming to extend H.264/AVC by developing novel tools optimized for 3D and multiview video use cases. One of the key identified requirements for the MVC standard is its ability to support parallel processing of different views. The parallel operation is known to be especially important for 3DTV applications, where the display needs to output many views simultaneously to support head-motion parallax. In this paper, we present a novel coding structure that enables parallel encoder/decoder operation for different views, without compromising from the coding efficiency. This is achieved by systematically restricting the reference area of each view, so that encoding and decoding of macroblocks from different views could be efficiently pipelined and parallel operation of separate views becomes possible. As the inter-view prediction is still used, proposed structure achieves up to 0.9 dB gain compared to simulcast, maintaining very similar desirable parallelism characteristics