1861851
Isolated regions in video coding
Different types of prediction are applied in modern video coding. While predictive coding improves compression efficiency, the propagation of transmission errors becomes more likely. In addition, predictive coding brings difficulties to other aspects of video coding, including random access, parallel processing, and scalability. In order to combat the negative effects, video coding schemes introduce mechanisms such as slices and intracoding, to limit and break the prediction. This paper proposes the use of the isolated regions coding tool that jointly limits in-picture prediction and interprediction on a region-of-interest basis. The tool can be used to provide random access points from non-intrapictures and to respond to intrapicture update requests. Furthermore, it can be applied as an error-robust macroblock mode decision method and can be used in combination with unequal error protection. Finally, it enables mixing of scenes, which is useful in coding of masked scene transitions.
14856574
Error Resilient Video Coding Using Unequally Protected Key Pictures
This paper proposes the use of unequally protected key pictures to prevent temporal error propagation in error-prone video communications. The key picture may either be an intra-coded picture or a picture using a long-term motion compensation reference picture through reference picture selection. The inter-coded key picture uses previous key pictures as motion compensation reference. Key pictures are better protected than other pictures using forward error correction in either source or transport coding. Simulation results show significantly improved error resiliency performance of the proposed technique compared to conventional methods.
14708720
Coding of faded scene transitions
Coding of a scene transition is often a challenging problem, from the compression efficiency point of view, because motion compensation may not be a powerful enough method to represent changes between pictures in the transition. This paper proposes a overlay coding technique for coding faded scene transitions. As shown by extensive simulations, over 50% bit-rate savings in both cross-fades and through-black fades compared to earlier techniques can be achieved. Overlay coding suits situations where video is edited manually or automatically.
2496902
Improved Error Concealment Using Scene Information
Signaling of scene information in coded bitstreams was proposed by the authors and adopted into the emerging video coding standard H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 part 10 or AVC) as a supplemental enhancement information (SEI) message. This paper proposes some improved error concealment methods for intra coded pictures and scene transition pictures using the signaled scene information. Simulation results show that the proposed methods outperform conventional techniques significantly.
15352869
Error Resilient Video Coding using Redundant Pictures
Coding of redundant pictures is supported in the latest international video coding standard H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 part 10 or AVC). This paper proposes a standard-compliant way to encode and decode redundant pictures for improved error resilience. The method is based on a combination of picture-level reference picture selection, reference picture list ordering, and a hierarchical allocation of redundant pictures, which can efficiently prevent temporal error propagation without relying on feedback information. Simulation results show that the method outperforms the optimal loss-aware rate-distortion optimized intra refresh method. The proposed algorithm has been adopted into the H.264 joint model.
14888347
Error Resilient Mode Decision in Scalable Video Coding
Error resilient macroblock mode decision has been extensively investigated in the literature for single-layer video coding, for which error resilient mode decision is also called as intra refresh. In this paper, we present a loss-aware rate-distortion optimized macroblock mode decision algorithm for scalable video coding, wherein more macroblock coding modes than intra and inter are involved. Thanks to the good performance, the proposed method has been adopted into the joint scalable video model by the joint video team.
39861836
A Novel Method for Eye Features Extraction
Extraction of the eye features, like the pupil center and radius, eye corners and eyelid contours from the frontal face images often provides us useful cues in many important applications, such as face recognition, facial expression recognition and 3D face modeling from 2D images. Assuming the rough eye window is known, the color information, Gabor features are extracted from the eye window and then these two features and their mutual relationship have been incorporated into the design of our algorithm. Firstly, after the pupil center is detected in H channel of HSV color space, the pupil radius is estimated and refined. Secondly, eye corners are localized using eye-corner filter based on Gabor feature space. Finally, eyelid curves are fitted by spline function. The new algorithm has been tested on our SJTU database and some other pictures taken from the web. The experimental results show that our algorithm has high accuracy and is robust under different conditions.
16213423
DFT-MSN: The Delay/Fault-Tolerant Mobile Sensor Network for Pervasive Information Gathering
This paper focuses on the Delay/Fault-Tolerant Mobile Sensor Network (DFT-MSN) for pervasive information gathering. We develop simple and efficient data delivery schemes tailored for DFT-MSN, which has several unique characteristics such as sensor mobility, loose connectivity, fault tolerability, delay tolerability, and buffer limit. We first study two basic approaches, namely, direct transmission and flooding. We analyze their performance by using queuing theory and statistics. Based on the analytic results that show the tradeoff between data delivery delay/ratio and transmission overhead, we introduce an optimized flooding scheme that minimizes transmission overhead in flooding. Then, we propose a simple and effective DFT-MSN data delivery scheme, which consists of two key components for data transmission and queue management, respectively. The former makes decision on when and where to transmit data messages based on the delivery probability, which reflects the likelihood that a sensor can deliver data messages to the sink. The latter decides which messages to transmit or drop based on the fault tolerance, which indicates the importance of the messages. The system parameters are carefully tuned on the basis of thorough analyses to optimize network performance. Extensive simulations are carried out for performance evaluation. Our results show that the proposed DFT-MSN data delivery scheme achieves the highest message delivery ratio with acceptable delay and transmission overhead.
17258193
Spatiotemporal video segmentation based on graphical models
This paper proposes a probabilistic framework for spatiotemporal segmentation of video sequences. Motion information, boundary information from intensity segmentation, and spatial connectivity of segmentation are unified in the video segmentation process by means of graphical models. A Bayesian network is presented to model interactions among the motion vector field, the intensity segmentation field, and the video segmentation field. The notion of the Markov random field is used to encourage the formation of continuous regions. Given consecutive frames, the conditional joint probability density of the three fields is maximized in an iterative way. To effectively utilize boundary information from the intensity segmentation, distance transformation is employed in local objective functions. Experimental results show that the method is robust and generates spatiotemporally coherent segmentation results. Moreover, the proposed video segmentation approach can be viewed as the compromise of previous motion based approaches and region merging approaches.
15802971
Subjective preference of spatio-temporal rate in video adaptation using multi-dimensional scalable coding
Video adaptation allows for direct manipulation of existing encoded video streams to meet new resource constraints without having to encode the video from scratch. Multi-dimensional scalable coding, such as motion-compensated subband coding (MCSBC), offers an effective and flexible representation for video adaptation. In order to develop robust criteria for selecting optimal spatio-temporal rates used in adaptation, knowledge about subjective preference of spatio-temporal rates is needed. We study the optimal temporal frame rate over a wide range of bandwidth (50 kbps to 1 Mbps) using subjective quality evaluation with 128 clips and 31 subjects. We analyze the results using statistical testing methods and investigate the dependence of optimal frame rate on user, bandwidth, and video content characteristics. Our findings indicate agreement among most users and the existence of switching bandwidths at which preferred frame rates change. Dependence of the preference on video content types is also revealed.
14692168
Testbed implementation of delay/fault-tolerant mobile sensor network (DFT-MSN)
In this paper we present a testbed implementation of delay/fault-tolerant mobile sensor network (DFT-MSN) for pervasive information gathering. We develop a simple and efficient data delivery scheme tailored for DFT-MSN, which consists of two key components for data transmission and queue management, respectively. The former makes decision on when and where to transmit data messages based on the delivery probability, which reflects the likelihood that a sensor can deliver data messages to the sink. The latter decides which messages to transmit or drop based on the fault tolerance, which indicates the importance of the messages. We implement the proposed data delivery scheme and establish a DFT-MSN testbed by using Crossbow sensors. A small scale experiment is carried out, which shows the effectiveness and efficiency of DFT-MSN