Towards a Multi-Granular RVC VTL: A Case Study of CAL Transformations on the ISO/IEC MPEG Fixed Point IDCT

Recent advances in digital video hardware, software and coding standards have led to a wide variety of digital video products. However, such continuous evolution leads to the necessity of regular replacements of the available multimedia devices. To avoid this, a new initiative within the MPEG community, namely Reconfigurable Video Coding, has risen to provide the flexible framework that allows for the “simple” realization of highly-reconfigurable video coding solutions, without the need to wait for decades to replace the existing infrastructure. This paper illustrates the different design schemes to build various platform-specific proprietary libraries, at various granularity levels, together with a case study to prove the concept

CAL Dataflow Components for an MPEG RVC AVC Baseline Encoder

In this paper, an efficient H.264/AVC baseline encoder, described in RVC-CAL actor language, is introduced. The main aim of the paper is twofold: a) to demonstrate the flexibility and ease that is provided by RVC-CAL, which allows for efficient implementation of the presented encoder, and b) to shed light on the advantages that can be brought into the RVC framework by including such encoding tools. The main modules of the designed encoder include: Inter Frame Prediction (Motion Estimation/Compensation), Intra Frame Prediction, and Entropy Coding. Descriptions of the designed modules, accompanied with RVC-CAL design issues are provided. A comparison between different development approaches is also provided. The obtained results show that specifying complex video codecs (e.g. H.264/AVC encoder) using RVC-CAL followed by automatic translation into HDL, which is achievable by the tools that support the standard, results in more efficient HW implementation compared to the traditional HW design flow. A discussion that explains the reasons behind such results concludes the pape

Reconfigurable Video Coding : Objectives and Technologies

The main objective of the MPEG Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) standard is to establish a framework for a more flexible usage of standard video coding technology. The framework not only supports multiple standards and new coding configurations, but also provides an incremental and modular approach to innovation in video compression development and design. This paper provides an overview of the main objectives of RVC, standard accompanied with a presentation of the components of the framework for both normative parts and supporting tools useful for the final implementation of RVC codecs. These elements include: the Video Tool Library (VTL), the new standard RVC–CAL language used for the specification of the library, the Bitstream Syntax Description (BSD) used for the specification of the compressed bitstreams, as well as the Functional unit Network Description (FND) that constitutes the specification of a modular library. Technologies and tools that support the RVC standard are also briefly introduced

Reconfigurable Video Coding on multicore : an overview of its main objectives

International audienceThe current monolithic and lengthy scheme behind the standardization and the design of new video coding standards is becoming inappropriate to satisfy the dynamism and changing needs of the video coding community. Such scheme and specification formalism does not allow the clear commonalities between the different codecs to be shown, at the level of the specification nor at the level of the implementation. Such a problem is one of the main reasons for the typically long interval elapsing between the time a new idea is validated until it is implemented in consumer products as part of a worldwide standard. The analysis of this problem originated a new standard initiative within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/ International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) committee, namely Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC). The main idea is to develop a video coding standard that overcomes many shortcomings of the current standardization and specification process by updating and progressively incrementing a modular library of components. As the name implies, flexibility and reconfigurability are new attractive features of the RVC standard. Besides allowing for the definition of new codec algorithms, such features, as well as the dataflow-based specification formalism, open the way to define video coding standards that expressly target implementations on platforms with multiple cores. This article provides an overview of the main objectives of the new RVC standard, with an emphasis on the features that enable efficient implementation on platforms with multiple cores. A brief introduction to the methodologies that efficiently map RVC codec specifications to multicore platforms is accompanied with an example of the possible breakthroughs that are expected to occur in the design and deployment of multimedia services on multicore platforms

Towards a Comprehensive RVC VTL: A CAL Description of an Efficient AVC Baseline Encoder

The Video Tool Library (VTL) is one of the major normative components of the Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) standard. It specifies the set of functional units (FUs)that may be interchangeably combined and connected to form different video codecs, with various compression performances and implementation complexities. In this paper, an efficient AVC baseline encoder that is described in CAL is introduced. The encoder is composed of many modules that also exist in other codecs of the same or different standards. This makes them highly reusable within the RVC framework. The main modules of the designed encoder include: Inter Prediction, Intra Prediction, and Entropy Coding. Brief descriptions of the designed modules, accompanied with CAL design issues are provided

An MPEG RVC AVC Baseline Encoder Based on a Novel Iterative Methodology

With the emergence of new generations of multicore architectures, the need for efficient multimedia algorithm implementations has become critical. This paper describes a new methodology for efficient implementations of algorithms targeting reconfigurable architectures. The Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) standard aims to provide a framework allowing a dynamic development,implementation and adoption of standardized video coding solutions with features of higher flexibility and reusability. RVC-CAL actor language is a dataflow language that makes better use of the multicore and parallel architectures. The proposed design flow methodology follows an iteration-based implementation model rather than the traditional sequential model. Analysis, design, development, simulation, testing and adaptation are performed with every iteration ending up with a functional “version” of the algorithm. A case study is conducted to illustrate the productivity of the proposed methodology in which the implementation of an AVC baseline encoder on a Xilinx Virtex 5 XC5VLX50T FPGA demonstrated for intra prediction architecture search space co-exploration

CAL Dataflow Components For an MPEG RVC AVC Baseline Encoder

In this paper, an efficient H.264/AVC baseline encoder, described in RVC-CAL actor language, is introduced. The main aim of the paper is two folds: a) to demonstrate the flexibility and ease that is provided by RVC-CAL, which allows for efficient implementation of the presented encoder, and b) to shed light on the advantages that can be brought into the RVC framework by including such encoding tools. The main modules of the designed encoder include: Inter Frame Prediction (Motion Estimation/Compensation), Intra Frame Prediction, and Entropy Coding. Descriptions of the designed modules, accompanied with RVC-CAL design issues are provided. A comparison between different development approaches is also provided. The obtained results show that specifying complex video codecs (e.g. H.264/AVC encoder) using RVC-CAL followed by automatic translation into HDL, which is achievable by the tools that support the standard, results in more efficient HW implementation compared to the traditional HW design flow. A discussion that explains the reasons behind such results concludes the paper

Efficient variable block size selection for an h.264 video encoder

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Liver lacerations after coronary bypass operation

Gastrointestinal complications after open-heart surgery are rare but may increase mortality rate significantly. We are presenting a rare complication of liver laceration after coronary bypass operation. The patient is a 57-year-old man who underwent urgent Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting operation (CABG). Liver laceration and free intra-peritoneal hemorrhage was discovered to be the result of chest tubes insertion, and resulted in drop of hemoglobin and hemodynamic instability. The hemorrhage was surgically controlled, and the patient made full recovery and was sent home. This case report emphasizes that when bleeding of unknown origin occurs after cardiac surgery, intra-abdominal bleeding should be considered