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ABSTRACT: Due to the increasing heterogeneity in the current multimedia landscape, the delivery of multimedia content has become an important issue today. This heterogeneity is not only reflected by a plethora of different usage environments, but also by the presence of multiple (scalable) coding formats. Therefore, format-independent adaptation engines have to be used within a multimedia delivery platform, which are able to adapt the multimedia content according to a certain usage environment, independent of the underlying coding format of the content. By relying on automatically created textual descriptions of the high-level syntax of binary media resources, a format-independent adaptation engine can be built. MPEG-21 generic bitstream syntax schema (gBS schema) is a tool that is part of the MPEG-21 multimedia framework. It enables the use of generic bitstream syntax descriptions (gBSDs), i.e., textual descriptions in XML, to steer the adaptation of a binary media resource, using format-independent adaptation logic. In this paper, we address the design and performance evaluation of a multimedia delivery platform that relies on gBS schema-driven adaptation engines. Our platform is called MuMiVA; it is a fully integrated, extensible platform for multimedia delivery in heterogeneous usage environments, using streaming technologies. To demonstrate the flexibility of our multimedia delivery platform, we discuss the functioning of two different applications (i.e., exploitation of temporal scalability and shot selection) applied to two different coding formats (i.e., MPEG-4 visual and H.264/AVC).
Multimedia, 2007. ISM 2007. Ninth IEEE International Symposium on; 01/2008
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H. Eeckhaut,
H. Devos,
P. Lambert, D. De Schrijver,
W. Van Lancker,
V. Nollet,
P. Avasare,
T. Clerckx,
F. Verdicchio,
M. Christiaens,
P. Schelkens,
R. Van de Walle,
D. Stroobandt
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ABSTRACT: Video source, carrier and client diversification have led the video coding community to develop scalable video codecs supporting efficient decoding at varying resolution, frame rate and quality. Scalable video has several advantages over a nonscalable approach, but a large scale deployment is far from trivial and a lot of open questions remain. To resolve these, we developed a complete video delivery chain for scalable wavelet-based video. This includes a video server, a negotiation framework, a video scaling infrastructure and two scalable video clients, one pure software client and one real-time, hardware accelerated client. This paper describes the complete chain and identifies and quantifies the impact of using scalable video in every link of this chain.
IEEE Transactions on Multimedia 12/2007; · 1.93 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: In order to create a media resource adaptation engine that supports current and future coding formats, a generic (i.e., format-agnostic) solution is needed. One way to realize this is to rely on automatically created textual descriptions of the high-level syntax of binary media resources, which can be used to steer the adaptation of media resources. MPEG-21 generic bitstream syntax schema (gBS Schema) is a tool that enables the use of format-agnostic textual descriptions or generic bitstream syntax descriptions (gBSDs). This paper introduces gBFlavor, a novel solution for the automatic generation of gBSDs. It offers the possibility to automatically generate a format-specific parser that is able to produce a gBSD for a given media resource. In this paper, the use of gBFlavor is demonstrated for the generation of gBSDs for H.264/AVC SVC compliant bitstreams. Performance results show that the proposed solution outperforms existing techniques in terms of execution speed.
Image Analysis and Processing, 2007. ICIAP 2007. 14th International Conference on; 10/2007
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ABSTRACT: Due to the increasing heterogeneity in network and terminal capabilities, the delivery of multimedia content has become an important issue today. In order to avoid offering multiple versions of the same media resource, a transparent approach under the form of scalable coding is needed for multimedia delivery systems. This paper proposes a fully format agnostic adaptation engine for scalable bitstreams by relying on an abstract model for these bitstreams. The adaptation technique is implemented by making use of the MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation specification. The approach is validated for five different scalable coding formats. Experimental results show that our fully format agnostic adaptation node customizes scalable bitstreams in real time (at a speed of more than 100 Mbit/s).
Multimedia and Expo, 2007 IEEE International Conference on; 08/2007
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ABSTRACT: Thanks to technological evolutions, the number of devices capable of playing video bitstreams is growing. The heterogeneity in these devices grows in terms of screen resolution, processing power, and available band width. In this paper, we describe an MPEG-21 Bitstream Syntax Description Language- based (BSDL-based) adaptation framework that allows providers to easily adapt scalable bitstreams without having to recode the original bitstream. We describe the steps necessary to adapt the bitstreams through BSDL. The main contribution of this paper is an optimized adaptation framework using a Bitstream Syntax Schema developed to minimize the size of the Bitstream Syntax Descriptions (BSDs). Furthermore, we created a Streaming Transformations for XML Stylesheet (STX-stylesheet) to exploit the advantages of Fine Grain Scalability, this to adapt the bitrate of Scalable Video Coding bitstreams in the most accurate way possible. Our results show that BSDL-based adaptation is able to compete with binary adaptation tools. The target bitrates can be reached within a margin of 2%, which is comparable to the reference software which uses binary adaptation.
Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services, 2007. WIAMIS '07. Eighth International Workshop on; 07/2007
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ABSTRACT: The use of Regions Of Interest (ROIs) is a useful concept for many application scenarios, especially for those applications that are deployed in heterogeneous multimedia environments. In this paper, we show how Flexible Macroblock Ordering can be used in the scalable extension of the H.264/AVC specification in order to define the ROIs in the coded bit- stream. Furthermore, we introduce an XML-driven adaptation framework based on the MPEG-21 Bitstream Syntax Description Language in order to implement the ROI extraction process. This framework gives us the opportunity to adapt scalable bitstreams by using an engine that has no knowledge of the underlying coding format. From the performance analysis of our adaptation framework, we can conclude that the ROIs can be extracted in the XML domain and that the ROIs in the adapted bitstream are still intact without quality degradation. Furthermore, the traditional drifting problem caused by the ROI extraction can be neglected. Finally, we show that the adaptation process in the XML domain can be executed in real time.
Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services, 2007. WIAMIS '07. Eighth International Workshop on; 07/2007
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ABSTRACT: The heterogeneity in the contemporary multimedia environments requires a format-agnostic adaptation framework for the consumption of digital video content. Scalable bitstreams can be used in order to satisfy as many circumstances as possible. In this paper, the scalable extension on the H.264/AVC specification is used to obtain the parent bitstreams. The adaptation along the combined scalability axis of the bitstreams is done in a format-independent manner. Therefore, an abstraction layer of the bitstream is needed. In this paper, XML descriptions are used representing the high-level structure of the bitstreams by relying on the MPEG-21 bitstream syntax description language standard. The exploitation of the combined scalability is executed in the XML domain by implementing the adaptation process in a streaming transformation for XML (STX) stylesheet. The algorithm used in the transformation of the XML description is discussed in detail in this paper. From the performance measurements, one can conclude that the STX transformation in the XML domain and the generation of the corresponding adapted bitstream can be realized in real time.
Circuits and Systems, 2007. ISCAS 2007. IEEE International Symposium on; 06/2007
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ABSTRACT: Semantic video adaptation takes into account the relevance of the different fragments of the video content in order to create a tailored video stream based on the user's preferences. As a shot can be considered as the smallest semantic unit in a video sequence, metadata can be added to each shot using MPEG-7 descriptions. Based on these metadata and the user's preferences, the original bitstream can be adapted in order to obtain the desired fragments. MPEG-21 DIA offers a tool, gBS schema, for exposing the high-level structure of a binary resource as an XML description. In this paper, shot information is inserted in these descriptions to create a link between metadata and semantic video adaptation. Furthermore, this paper proposes to keep the structure of these descriptions format-agnostic. As a result, only one generic transformation style sheet has to be implemented to support shot-based video adaptation of sequences compliant with different video specifications. Special attention is paid to sequences coded with the H.264/AVC standard as this specification contains several interesting features important for shot-based video adaptation
Computational Intelligence in Image and Signal Processing, 2007. CIISP 2007. IEEE Symposium on; 05/2007
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ABSTRACT: The emerging scalable video coding specification, which is a layered extension of the H.264/AVC specification, introduces several inter-layer prediction modes to increase the compression rate. A major drawback of these prediction modes, is the increased complexity of the encoder. In this paper, we focus on the coding performance using inter-layer prediction modes in spatial enhancement layers. From our performance results, we see that enabling the inter-layer intra prediction mode results in bit rate savings of 9.9% on average for the tested sequences and the combinations of quantization parameters without significantly affecting the PSNR (a slight increase of 0.2% on average). The downside of this prediction method, is an increased encoding time of 18 to 22%. For interpredicted pictures, the increase of the coding time is significant: 133.32% on average, with an observed maximum of 259.95%. The highest bit rate reductions (up to 27.47%) and increase in PSNR (0.21% on average) are observed when the quantization of the enhancement layer is high.
Signal Processing and Its Applications, 2007. ISSPA 2007. 9th International Symposium on; 03/2007
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ABSTRACT: Bitstream structure descriptions (BSDs) allow taking the complexity of transforming scalable bitstreams from the compressed domain to the semantic domain. These descriptions are an essential part of an XML-driven video adaptation framework. The performance of a BSD transformation engine is very important in such architecture. This paper evaluates the efficiency of XML-based transformation languages in our video adaptation framework. XSLT, STX, and a hybrid solution are compared to each other in terms of execution times, memory consumption, and user-friendliness. Our experiments show that STX is the preferred solution when speed and low-memory are important. The hybrid solution is competitive in terms of memory consumption and is more user-friendly than STX. Although XSLT is relative fast, its memory consumption is very high
Innovative Computing, Information and Control, 2006. ICICIC '06. First International Conference on; 10/2006
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ABSTRACT: The heterogeneity in the current and future multimedia environment requires an elegant adaptation framework for the production and consumption of different kinds of multimedia content. Such an architecture is preferably based on the usage of scalable bitstreams and a format-agnostic content adaptation engine. To obtain fully embedded scalable bitstreams, the joint scalable video model (JSVM) has been used in this paper. Hereby, JSVM defines a scalable extension on top of the H.264/AVC specification. This extension will make it possible to create bitstreams that are scalable along the temporal, spatial, and SNR axis. On the other hand, bitstream structure descriptions can be used to realize an elegant and format-agnostic adaptation engine. Such descriptions can be created by making use of the MPEG-21 bitstream syntax description language (BSDL) standard. The latter allows to describe the high-level structure of scalable bitstreams in XML. This paper explains how fully scalable bitstreams can be customized by transforming BSDL-based bitstream structure descriptions. From our performance analysis, one can conclude that the transformation of the XML description, as well as the generation of the adapted bitstream, can be done several times faster than real time
Circuits and Systems, 2006. ISCAS 2006. Proceedings. 2006 IEEE International Symposium on; 06/2006
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ABSTRACT: In order to efficiently deal with the heterogeneity in the current and future multimedia ecosystem, it is necessary that content can be adapted in a format-agnostic manner. A first step toward a solution, able to fulfill the just mentioned requirement, is to rely on a scalable video codec and to describe the high-level structure of the resulting bitstreams in such a way that every terminal can understand it, in particular by using XML. This paper describes how such descriptions can be generated by making use of the media format independent BintoBSD tool of the MPEG-21 BSDL standard. However, regarding the current status of BSDL, it is impossible to create a description in real time and to keep the generation speed constant over the complete sequence. In this paper, we describe a number of extensions and algorithmic modifications that make it possible to generate a description of a bitstream in real time and at a constant speed. Our approach results in a significant reduction of the original execution times (up to 99% for the H.264/AVC coding format) and in a constant memory usage.
Multimedia, Seventh IEEE International Symposium on; 01/2006
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ABSTRACT: While RSS feeds increase in popularity as a mean to stay up to date with the most recent changes on a Web site, its XML representation is causing bandwidth related problems. These issues relate to the verbosity and the indivisible nature of the XML language. As such, bandwidth is wasted twofold as: (1) an RSS feed has no compact representation due to the plain text XML representation; and (2) previously received information about the RSS feed is discarded every time the RSS viewer retrieves the feed. Compression (binary encoding) of the XML data becomes relevant to eliminate the overhead. In this paper, we demonstrate the usefulness of the MPEG-7 binary format for metadata to address both overhead issues. We validate its usability in a typical RSS scenario by calculating the byte size reduction and by comparing the processing speed of creating and parsing binary encoded RSS feeds to traditional RSS feeds.
Information Technology and Applications, 2005. ICITA 2005. Third International Conference on; 08/2005
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ABSTRACT: The efficient adaptation of scalable media resources is a major point of interest, due to today's tremendous heterogeneity in terms of end-user terminals, network technologies, and coding formats. In order to create a media resource adaptation engine supporting current and future coding formats, a generic (i.e., format-independent) solution is needed. One way to realize this goal is to rely on automatically created textual descriptions of the high-level syntax of binary media resources. MPEG-21 generic Bitstream Syntax Schema (gBS Schema) is a tool that is part of the MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework. It enables the use of generic Bitstream Syntax Descriptions (gBSDs), i.e., textual descriptions in XML, to steer the adaptation of a binary media resource, using format-independent adaptation logic. The major contribution of this paper is the introduction of gBFlavor. It is a novel solution for the automatic and format-agnostic generation of gBSDs. gBFlavor offers the possibility to automatically create a format-specific parser that is able to produce a gBSD, taking as input a particular media resource compliant to the coding format described by the parser. This paper provides an overview of the gBFlavor language, which allows describing the high-level structure of a coding format. The overall functioning of a gBFlavor-enabled adaptation framework is discussed as well. Performance results for two scalable coding formats, in particular H.264/AVC Scalable Video Coding and JPEG2000, show that our proposed solution outperforms existing techniques in terms of execution speed.
