Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents a novel method for cooperative educational dissemination systems. Taking into consideration the inherent characteristics of distance learning video streams (existence of a few slow moving objects in a classroom), we have proposed a novel content-based video coding method that is very efficient at low bitrate channels. On the encoding side, we have applied a background subtraction algorithm for motion segmentation using a novel statistical background modeling approach. At each frame, the moving objects are extrapolated with a rectangular model and tracked frame by frame (which forms the only data needed to be sent over the channel). On the decoding side, we have used a new... 

This paper presents a novel video encoding method for cooperative Educational Dissemination Systems. Taking into consideration the inherent characteristics of distance learning video streams, existing a few moving objects in the scene and objects having slow motions, we propose a novel content-based video encoding method which is very efficient on low bandwidth channels. In the encoding process, we apply a background subtraction algorithm for motion segmentation with a novel statistical background modeling. In each frame, the moving objects are extrapolated with rectangular bounding boxes which are the only data send over the low bandwidth channel. In the decoding process, we propose a new... 

Multiple description coding (MDC) is a technique where multiple streams from a source video are generated, each individually decodable and mutually refinable. MDC is a promising solution to overcome packet loss in video transmission over noisy channels, particularly for real-time applications in which retransmission of lost information is not practical. A problem with conventional MDC is that the achieved side distortion quality is considerably lower than single description coding (SDC) quality except at high redundancies which in turn leads to central quality degradation. In this paper, a new mixed layer MDC scheme is presented with no degradation in central quality, and providing better... 

This paper aims to present a novel accurate moving object detection method based on the conditional random field (CRF) for high efficiency video coding/H.265 compressed domain video sequences. For each block, the number of consumed bits, motion vectors (MVs), and partitioning modes for a given block is extracted from the compressed bitstream. After removing outlier MVs, compensating MVs are assigned to the I-blocks based on their neighboring blocks. The information, such as MV, partitioning mode, and bit consumption, is used in the potential functions of a CRF model which is updated for every frame to detect the objects. Then, a number of standard test video sequences are used to verify the... 

This paper presents a novel video encoding method for cooperative educational dissemination systems. Taking into consideration the inherent characteristics of stereo cameras framework in our educational videos and the ability of determining objects in different depths in a scene, we have proposed a novel object-based video encoding based on "sprite coding" that supports the MPEG-4 Version 1 Main profile in order to transfer distance learning videos across narrow-band transmission links such as the Internet. This paper proposes a multi-layer video object layer generation scheme with foreground moving object extraction and background sprite generation using stereo camera property. The... 

In this paper joint optimization of layers in the layered video coding is investigated. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, it is shown that, due to higher interactions between the layers in a SNR scalable codec, this type of layering technique benefits most from joint optimization of the layers. A method for joint optimization is then proposed, and its compression efficiency is contrasted against the separate optimization and an optimized single layer coder. It is shown that, in joint optimization of SNR scalable coders when the quantization step size of the enhancement layer is larger than half the step size of the base layer, an additional improvement is gained by not sending... 

H.264/AVC, the latest video coding standard, achieves better video compression rates since it supports new features such as a large number of intra- and inter-prediction candidate modes. H.264/AVC adopts rate-distortion optimization (RDO) technique to obtain the best intra- and inter-prediction, while maximizing visual quality and minimizing the required bit rate. However, the RDO reduces the encoding speed via the exhaustive evaluation of all candidate modes. In this paper, we decrease the encoding time by reducing the computational complexity of the prediction function and the number of candidate modes. First, we improve Pan's method, by eliminating the DC mode from the candidates. Second,... 

Multiple Description Coding (MDC) is a technique where multiple streams from a source are generated, each individually decodable and mutually refinable. In this paper, a new Mixed Layer MDC (MLMDC) scheme is presented which achieves a higher side quality compared to conventional MDCs. The improved side performance leads to higher average video quality at the receiver in lossy networks. For each DCT coefficient, we generate two coefficients: Base Coefficient (BC) and Enhancement Coefficient (EC) which are combined together. When all descriptions are available, they are decomposed and decoded to achieve high quality video. When one description is not available, we use estimation to extract as... 

Abstract Multiple Description Coding (MDC) is a technique where multiple streams from a video source are generated, each individually decodable and mutually refinable. MDC is a promising solution to overcome packet loss in video transmission over noisy channels, particularly for real-time applications in which retransmission of lost information is not practical. The error resiliency feature of MDC is achieved at the cost of redundancy, and the required amount of redundancy for each frame depends on the packet loss ratio and also the importance of the frame in the sequence. Due to the error propagation in video transmission over lossy channels, reference frames of a Group of Pictures (GOP)... 

Fractional-pixel accuracy Motion Estimation (ME) has been shown to result in higher quality reconstructed image sequences in hybrid video coding systems. However, the higher quality is achieved by notably increased Motion Field (MF) bitrate and more complex computations. In this paper, new half-pixel block matching ME algorithms are proposed to improve the rate-distortion characteristics of low bitrate video communications. The proposed methods tend to decrease the required video bandwidth, while improving the motion compensation quality. The key idea is to put a deeper focus on the search origin of the ME process, based on center-bias characteristics of low bitrate video MFs. To employ the...