Quality-aware adaptive delivery of multi-view video

Advances in video coding and networking technologies have paved the way for the Multi-View Video (MVV) streaming. However, large amounts of data and dynamic network conditions result in frequent network congestion, which may prevent video packets from being delivered on time. As a consequence, the 3D viewing experience may be degraded signifi- cantly, unless quality-aware adaptation methods are deployed. There is no research work to discuss the MVV adaptation of decision strategy or provide a detailed analysis of a dynamic network environment. This work addresses the mentioned issues for MVV streaming over HTTP for emerging multi-view displays. In this research work, the effect of various adaptations of decision strategies are evaluated and, as a result, a new quality-aware adaptation method is designed. The proposed method is benefiting from layer based video coding in such a way that high Quality of Experience (QoE) is maintained in a cost-effective manner. The conducted experimental results on MVV streaming using the proposed strategy are showing that the perceptual 3D video quality, under adverse network conditions, is enhanced significantly as a result of the proposed quality-aware adaptation

Quality-aware adaptive delivery of multi-view video

Advances in video coding and networking technologies have paved the way for the Multi-View Video (MVV) streaming. However, large amounts of data and dynamic network conditions result in frequent network congestion, which may prevent video packets from being delivered on time. As a consequence, the 3D viewing experience may be degraded signifi- cantly, unless quality-aware adaptation methods are deployed. There is no research work to discuss the MVV adaptation of decision strategy or provide a detailed analysis of a dynamic network environment. This work addresses the mentioned issues for MVV streaming over HTTP for emerging multi-view displays. In this research work, the effect of various adaptations of decision strategies are evaluated and, as a result, a new quality-aware adaptation method is designed. The proposed method is benefiting from layer based video coding in such a way that high Quality of Experience (QoE) is maintained in a cost-effective manner. The conducted experimental results on MVV streaming using the proposed strategy are showing that the perceptual 3D video quality, under adverse network conditions, is enhanced significantly as a result of the proposed quality-aware adaptation

Adaptive delivery of immersive 3D multi-view video over the Internet

The increase in Internet bandwidth and the developments in 3D video technology have paved the way for the delivery of 3D Multi-View Video (MVV) over the Internet. However, large amounts of data and dynamic network conditions result in frequent network congestion, which may prevent video packets from being delivered on time. As a consequence, the 3D video experience may well be degraded unless content-aware precautionary mechanisms and adaptation methods are deployed. In this work, a novel adaptive MVV streaming method is introduced which addresses the future generation 3D immersive MVV experiences with multi-view displays. When the user experiences network congestion, making it necessary to perform adaptation, the rate-distortion optimum set of views that are pre-determined by the server, are truncated from the delivered MVV streams. In order to maintain high Quality of Experience (QoE) service during the frequent network congestion, the proposed method involves the calculation of low-overhead additional metadata that is delivered to the client. The proposed adaptive 3D MVV streaming solution is tested using the MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) standard. Both extensive objective and subjective evaluations are presented, showing that the proposed method provides significant quality enhancement under the adverse network conditions

Dynamic adaptive 3D multi-view video streaming over the internet

Increasing throughput rates and technical developments in video streaming over the Internet offer an attractive solution for the distribution of immersive 3D multi-view. Nevertheless, robustness of video streaming is subject to its utilisation of efficient error resiliency and content aware adaptation techniques. Dynamic network characteristics resulting in frequent congestions may prevent video packets from being delivered in a timely manner. Packet delivery failures may become prominent, degrading 3D immersive video experience significantly. In order to overcome this problem, a novel view recovery technique for 3D free-viewpoint video is introduced to maintain 3D video quality in a cost-effective manner. In this concept, the undelivered (discarded) views as a result of adaptation in the network are recovered with high quality at the receiver side, using Side Information (SI) and the delivered frames of neighbouring views. The proposed adaptive 3D multi-view video streaming scheme is tested using Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) standard. Tests using the proposed adaptive technique have revealed that the perceptual 3D video quality under adverse network conditions is significantly improved thanks to the utilisation of the extra side information in view recovery

Adaptive 3D multi-view video streaming over P2P networks

Streaming 3D multi-view video to multiple clients simultaneously remains a highly challenging problem due to the high-volume of data involved and the inherent limitations imposed by the delivery networks. Delivery of multimedia streams over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks has gained great interest due to its ability to maximise link utilisation, preventing the transport of multiple copies of the same packet for many users. On the other hand, the quality of experience can still be significantly degraded by dynamic variations caused by congestions, unless content-aware precautionary mechanisms and adaptation methods are deployed. In this paper, a novel, adaptive multi-view video streaming over a P2P system is introduced which addresses the next generation high resolution multi-view users' experiences with autostereoscopic displays. The solution comprises the extraction of low-overhead supplementary metadata at the media encoding server that is distributed through the network and used by clients performing network adaptation. In the proposed concept, pre-selected views are discarded at a times of network congestion and reconstructed with high quality using the metadata and the neighbouring views. The experimental results show that the robustness of P2P multi-view streaming using the proposed adaptation scheme is significantly increased under congestion

Mapping the Virtual Production eco-system

Report of a research project undertaken by the Creative Research and Innovation Centre at Loughborough University London. The aim of this project was to map the emerging ecosystem of virtual production in the creative industries, capturing existing and proposed assets, or facilities, and creating a framework for assessing where in the value chain such assets are positioned. It was intended to map the landscape in terms such as geography, capacities, functions and technology readiness, using the Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) framework that is familiar in R&D literature. As a short piece of work, operating across a rapidly changing set of creative technology practices post-pandemic, the ‘map’ or ‘maps’ created were intended to be snapshots of a dynamic landscape; and the more substantial outcome of the work would be the creation of a Framework for future study.</p

Sound localisation for 3D multimedia streaming

This paper proposes an audiovisual 3D multimedia system based on multi-view video and wave field synthesis cooperated with the object-based audio. The spatial audio rendering method based on wave field synthesis is particularly useful for applications where multiple users experience true immersive sound while being free to move without losing spatial sound effects. The unique features of the methodology can be very useful in high quality virtual experience applications, and in particular for creating precise audio objects synchronised with multi-view video stream, delivered to the users in network platforms. The paper introduces a novel 3D multimedia rendering and streaming architecture over the Internet, and also reports on the experimental results. The multimedia system is demonstrated and con-firmed that while covering the viewing angle, the developed approach can create a variety of virtual audio objects at target positions with very high accuracy

Optimal image compression via block-based adaptive colour reduction with minimal contour effect

Current image acquisition devices require tremendous amounts of storage for saving the data returned. This paper overcomes the latter drawback through proposing a colour reduction technique which first subdivides the image into patches, and then makes use of fuzzy c-means and fuzzy-logic-based inference systems, in order to cluster and reduce the number of the unique colours present in each patch, iteratively. The colours available in each patch are quantised, and the emergence of false edges is checked for, by means of the Sobel edge detection algorithm, so as to minimise the contour effect. At the compression stage, a methodology taking advantage of block-based singular value decomposition and wavelet difference reduction is adopted. Considering 35000 sample images from various databases, the proposed method outperforms centre cut, moment-preserving threshold, inter-colour correlation, generic K-means and quantisation by dimensionality reduction