MASCOT : metadata for advanced scalable video coding tools : final report

The goal of the MASCOT project was to develop new video coding schemes and tools that provide both an increased coding efficiency as well as extended scalability features compared to technology that was available at the beginning of the project. Towards that goal the following tools would be used: - metadata-based coding tools; - new spatiotemporal decompositions; - new prediction schemes. Although the initial goal was to develop one single codec architecture that was able to combine all new coding tools that were foreseen when the project was formulated, it became clear that this would limit the selection of the new tools. Therefore the consortium decided to develop two codec frameworks within the project, a standard hybrid DCT-based codec and a 3D wavelet-based codec, which together are able to accommodate all tools developed during the course of the project

Forensic data hiding optimized for JPEG 2000

This paper presents a novel image adaptive data hiding system using properties of the discrete wavelet transform and which is ready to use in combination with JPEG 2000. Image adaptive watermarking schemes determine the embedding samples and strength from the image statistics. We propose to use the energy of wavelet coefficients at high frequencies to measure the amount of distortion that can be tolerated by a lower frequency coefficient. The watermark decoder in image adaptive data hiding needs to estimate the same parameters used for encoding from a modified source and hence is vulnerable to desynchronization. We present a novel way to resolve these synchronization issues by employing specialized insertion, deletion and substitution codes. Given the low complexity and reduced perceptual impact of the embedding technique, it is suitable for inserting camera and/or projector information to facilitate image forensics

Selecting stimuli parameters for video quality studies based on perceptual similarity distances

This work presents a methodology to optimize the selection of multiple parameter levels of an image acquisition, degradation, or post-processing process applied to stimuli intended to be used in a subjective image or video quality assessment (QA) study. It is known that processing parameters (e.g. compression bit-rate) or technical quality measures (e.g. peak signal-to-noise ratio, PSNR) are often non-linearly related to human quality judgment, and the model of either relationship may not be known in advance. Using these approaches to select parameter levels may lead to an inaccurate estimate of the relationship between the parameter and subjective quality judgments – the system’s quality model. To overcome this, we propose a method for modeling the relationship between parameter levels and perceived quality distances using a paired comparison parameter selection procedure in which subjects judge the perceived similarity in quality. Our goal is to enable the selection of evenly sampled parameter levels within the considered quality range for use in a subjective QA study. This approach is tested on two applications: (1) selection of compression levels for laparoscopic surgery video QA study, and (2) selection of dose levels for an interventional X-ray QA study. Subjective scores, obtained from the follow-up single stimulus QA experiments conducted with expert subjects who evaluated the selected bit-rates and dose levels, were roughly equidistant in the perceptual quality space - as intended. These results suggest that a similarity judgment task can help select parameter values corresponding to desired subjective quality levels

Proceedings of the second "international Traveling Workshop on Interactions between Sparse models and Technology" (iTWIST'14)

The implicit objective of the biennial "international - Traveling Workshop on Interactions between Sparse models and Technology" (iTWIST) is to foster collaboration between international scientific teams by disseminating ideas through both specific oral/poster presentations and free discussions. For its second edition, the iTWIST workshop took place in the medieval and picturesque town of Namur in Belgium, from Wednesday August 27th till Friday August 29th, 2014. The workshop was conveniently located in "The Arsenal" building within walking distance of both hotels and town center. iTWIST'14 has gathered about 70 international participants and has featured 9 invited talks, 10 oral presentations, and 14 posters on the following themes, all related to the theory, application and generalization of the "sparsity paradigm": Sparsity-driven data sensing and processing; Union of low dimensional subspaces; Beyond linear and convex inverse problem; Matrix/manifold/graph sensing/processing; Blind inverse problems and dictionary learning; Sparsity and computational neuroscience; Information theory, geometry and randomness; Complexity/accuracy tradeoffs in numerical methods; Sparsity? What's next?; Sparse machine learning and inference.Comment: 69 pages, 24 extended abstracts, iTWIST'14 website: http://sites.google.com/site/itwist1

Low-Complexity 3D-DWT video encoder applicable to IPTV

3D-DWT encoders are good candidates for applications like professional video editing, IPTV video surveillance, live event IPTV broadcast, multispectral satellite imaging, HQ video delivery, etc., where a frame must be reconstructed as fast as possible. However, the main drawback of the algorithms that compute the 3D-DWT is the huge memory requirement in practical implementations. In this paper, and in order to considerably reduce the memory requirements of this kind of video encoders, we present a new 3D-DWT video encoder based on (a) the use of a novel frame-based 3D-DWT transform that avoids video sequence partitioning in Groups Of Pictures (GOP) and (b) a very fast run-length encoder. Furthermore, an exhaustive evaluation of the proposed encoder (3D-RLW) has been performed, analyzing the sensibility of the ¿lters employed in the 3D-DWT transform and comparing the evaluation results with other video encoders in terms of R/D, coding/decoding delay and memory consumptionThanks to Spanish Ministry of Education and Science under grants DPI2007-66796-C03-03 for funding.López ., O.; Piñol ., P.; Martinez Rach, MO.; Perez Malumbres, MJ.; Oliver Gil, JS. (2011). Low-Complexity 3D-DWT video encoder applicable to IPTV. Signal Processing: Image Communication. 26(7):358-369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.image.2011.01.008S35836926