Adaptable system based on Scalable Video Coding for high-quality video service

Video communication requires sufficient resources to obtain the desired image quality. Availability of bandwidth and screen resolution from different devices on the client end, as well as compression techniques used for transmission also significantly influence to the video quality. Even though the H.264/AVC video compression standard and its scalable extension is known as Scalable Video Coding (SVC) was introduced and successfully addressed the challenge, some weaknesses persist especially for high-resolution video transmissions. The size of the bitstream generated by the SVC standard for ultra-high resolution video compression can only be met if transmitted on a network with a large bandwidth. The Scalable High-Efficiency Video Coding (SHVC) were introduced to overcome problems in the SVC standards. The new video compression standard is proven to reduce bandwidth requirements by up to 46.41 % compared to the SVC standards for the same video quality. This study introduces the performance analysis of SHVC standard video transmission as compared to SVC standard. Both compression standards are transmitted and emulated through network emulator called Mininet-Wifi to get the real transmission picture. The client-server video transmission scheme with different bandwidth and various client position are set in the experiment scenario. It is found that transmission time, packet loss, and video reconstruction quality on scalable video transmission with SHVC standard is better than scalable video transmissions with SVC standard.

The development of Scalable Video Coding (SVC) has been directed to serve a wide range of terminals over heterogeneous networks with the same encoded bit stream. SVC provides an elegant solution to adapt the video content, as it allows terminal and/or gateways accessing only a sub-part of the stream, without affecting the semantics of the source video signal. This paper describes adaptation mechanisms based on SVC, focusing on the implementation in the context of the IST project ENTHRONE. A particular emphasis is placed on adaptation techniques based on SVC NAL unit header extension, and on innovative RTP packet loss handling mechanisms, specifically conceived to handle losses in scenarios where SVC to SVC and SVC to H.264/AVC adaptation is performed and layered multicast cannot be used.

In October 2007 ITU-T and MPEG organizations published the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) specification as an addendum to the H.264 standard. Basically SVC enables H.264 video encoders to support temporal, spatial and SNR scalability. This new functionalities lead to more flexibility on bandwidth management and robustness against packet losses. It is therefore more suitable for heterogeneous multimedia applications like IPTV and mobile networks. However implementations of SVC specification are still limited due the augmented computational complexity. One of the most critical SVC algorithms is the motion estimation module, which allows identification of extra intra and inter-layer redundancies. The great computation demand of this module is responsible for the large SVC encoder latency time, restraining its use in real-time applications. We propose in this paper a new motion estimation approach specially designed to reduce memory accesses and data comparisons in order to increase performance. Experimental results prove significant gains in speed (up to 6 times faster) with small effects on quality (less than 0.2 dB).

HTTP Video streaming has become a strong candidate for video transmission on the Internet thanks to the abundance of web infrastructure. With the recent standardization of the new MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), the flexibility and implantation of adaptive video systems has increased due to the fact that DASH can operate on a conventional web infrastructure. In this paper we propose an estimation and adaptation system for DASH. The proposed adaptive algorithm is based on client buffer threshold and smooth throughput measures (based on the throughput of previous segments). Before DASH, the standard of Scalable Video Coding (SVC) also arose from the idea of adaptation. Both systems (adaptive system based on SVC and the proposed system for DASH) are compared in terms of Video Quality (VQ) metrics. The results show that the proposed system reacts properly to changes in the network capacity, while maintaining a minimum level of segments in the buffer. The user-perceived quality is better than in the SVC-based adaptive system although the generated traffic is higher.

Scalable video coding (SVC) has aroused a wide interest in the areas of video coding and transmission technology, since it provides desirable features for heterogeneous error-prone network environments. The layered video structure allows not only adaptation to the available bandwidth but also a device adaptation capability via multiple decodable sub-streams. In this paper, we focus on SVC Medium- Grain Scalability (MGS) and investigate the end user's quality of experience (QoE) in error-prone transmission conditions. We describe our error detection and concealment implementation on the JSVM 9.15 reference decoder and assess its effectiveness through several quality indicators. Results show an improvement of the proposed concealment strategy when compared to the standard Frame Copy (FC) and Interpolation, in terms of Peak Signal-to-Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index Metric (SSIM) quality metrics. This improvement is evident in the case of concealment on quality enhancement layers, since video fluidity is preserved assuring an acceptable QoE to the end users.

This paper describes the design and implementation of a multimedia home gateway for threescreen television (3STV) service. The proposed in-home wireless network uses scalable video coding (SVC) and unequal error protection with Raptor forward error correction (FEC) for maximizing the quality of experience (QoE) over the variable-bandwidth, error-prone wireless network. The gateway incorporates (a) dynamic SVC layerswitching, which enables the server to perform selecting appropriate layers from SVC bitstreams, (b) adaptive Raptor FEC, which controls the overhead of Raptor FEC according to packet loss rate (PLR), (c) an efficient combination of (a) and (b), and (d) slice group-based selective streaming in the overall gateway architecture. The paper explains the home gateway architecture as well as experiments for performance evaluation as compared to that of traditional SVC streaming. In the experiments conducted, gains in video quality vary from 2 to 5dB in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), with corresponding subjective improvements. Overall reductions of bit rate at the input to the home gateway vary from 28% to 36% <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> .

This paper discusses the multicast routing problem with multiple QoS constraints, which may deal with the delay, delay jitter, bandwidth and packet loss metrics, and describes a network model for researching the routing problem. It presents a multicast routing protocol with multiple QoS constraints (MRPMQ). The MRPMQ attempts to significantly reduce the overhead of constructing a multicast tree with multiple QoS constraints. In MPRMQ, a multicast group member can join or leave a multicast session dynamically, which should not disrupt the multicast tree. It also attempts to minimize overall cost of the tree, and satisfy the multiple QoS constraints and least cost (or lower cost) requirements. In this paper, the proof of correctness and a complexity analysis of the MRPMQ are also given. Simulation results show that MRPMQ is a feasible approach to multicast routing with multiple QoS constraints.

A novel hybrid 3D video service algorithm based on scalable video coding (SVC) technology

With the rapid development of multimedia technology, video transmission over error prone channels is becoming possible. Lossy video coding together with channel errors result in more degradation in quality of the video. Unequal Error Protection (UEP) can be employed for solving this issue. Using UEP with scalable video coding (SVC) improves the quality of the transmitted video. The efficiency of this combination can be further enhanced by carefully considering the importance of each protected element. In this paper, we propose an efficient UEP scheme to protect scalable video, coded with the scalable extension of H.264/AVC, over networks with packet loss. Genetic algorithm (GA) is exploited to achieve the optimal rate allocation for each layer. Experimental results show a significant improvement of 1.15dB in average, in comparison with conventional methods.KeywordsUnequal error protection (UEP)scalable video coding (SVC)H.264/AVCGenetic Algorithm (GA)Reed Solomon coding

This paper describes a three-screen television system using a block recovery rate (BRR)-based unequal error protection (UEP). The proposed in-home wireless network uses scalable video coding (SVC) and UEP with forward error correction (FEC) for maximizing the quality of service (QoS) over error-prone wireless networks. For efficient FEC packet assignment, this paper proposes a simple and efficient performance metric, a BRR which is defined as a recovery rate of temporal and quality layer from FEC assignment by analyzing the hierarchical prediction structure including the current packet loss. It also explains the SVC layer switching scheme according to network conditions such as packet loss rate (PLR) and available bandwidth (ABW). In the experiments conducted, gains in video quality with the proposed UEP scheme vary from 1 to 3 dB in Y-peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) with corresponding subjective video quality improvements.

Analysis and performance evaluation of scalable video coding over heterogeneous cellular networks

Wireless ad-hoc networks are collections of devices which are able to communicate each other through wireless links. Those networks differ from infrastructure-based wireless networks for the absence of a centralized coordinator which handles all the communications among the devices. This leads to higher probability of packets collision, congestion of links, etc. Moreover, wireless links are characterized by an intrinsic high and time varying packet loss ratio, due to external noise and interferences. The objective of this paper is to present a new distributed multi-path algorithm (i.e., traffic is split among multiple paths) for wireless ad-hoc networks with the aims of (i) increasing the throughput of the applications running onto the network (ii) explicitly accounting for the packet loss of the wireless links and (iii) guaranteeing that the routing process converges to stable paths. The algorithm is developed by using the concept of Wardrop equilibrium. Simulation results show the higher throughput achieved by the proposed routing algorithm, compared to shortest path routing protocols, based on hop count and on packet loss metrics.

In this paper, a test bed of QoS-aware ubiquitous content access (UCA), which allows a user to access and consume multimedia content through convergent networks of broadcasting and communications (WLAN/CDMA) using diverse devices in a seamless and transparent way, is designed and implemented based on the adaptation of scalable and non-scalable content. Especially, the MPEG-21 digital item adaptation (DIA) is employed to find a systematic solution in choosing an optimal adaptation operation under given usage environments in an interoperable way. Furthermore, scalable video coding (SVC) technology is adopted to provide flexible adaptation in spatial, temporal, and quality dimensions in real-time

Many user applications (and the transport protocols that make them possible) require two-way communications. To assess this capability, and to achieve test system simplicity, round-trip loss measurements are frequently conducted in practice. The Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol specified in RFC 5357 establishes a round-trip loss measurement capability for the Internet. However, there is currently no round-trip packet loss metric specified according to the RFC 2330 framework. This memo adds round-trip loss to the set of IP Performance Metrics (IPPM). [STANDARDS-TRACK]

Multidimensional Signal, Image, and Video Processing and Coding