Compressed Video Bitstream Research Articles

모바일 화상통신을 위한 오류강인 부호화 기법

영상을 통신망에서 실시간 전송하려면 압축된 비디오 비트열이 필요하다. 비디오 압축 알고리즘은 시간적, 공간적, 확률적 중복성을 제거하기 때문에 부호화된 비트열은 전송과정 중에 발생하는 전송에러에 매우 민감한 특성을 보인다. 본 논문에서는 저 전송률 비디오 코딩에서 에러의 확산을 막기 위한 에러 복원코딩 방식을 제안한다. 이런 에러 복원 코딩 기술의 성능은 전송에러를 얼마나 정확하게 탐지해 내느냐에 달려 있는데, 전송 에러를 검출하기위해 데이터 숨김이라는 방식을 제안한다. 그리고 에러가 발생한 매크로블록을 복원하기 위해 인트라 매크로블록 갱신 기술과, 움직임 벡터 예측을 이용한 움직임 보상 기술을 적용하여 성능을 비교 및 평가한다. 이 방식은 WCDMA와 같이 에러가 발생할 확률이 있는 비디오 전송망에서 사용할 경우 매우 효과적이다. Compressed video bitstreams are intended for real-time transmission over communication networks. Because video compression algorithms eliminate the temporal, spatial, and statistical redundancies, the coded video bitstreams are very sensitive to transmission errors. We propose an error resilient video coding technique to limit the effect of error propagation in low bit-rate video coding. The success of error resilient coding techniques relies on how accurately the transmission errors can be detected. To detect the transmission error, we propose a very simple error detection technique based on data hiding Next, we conceal the corrupted MB data using intra MB refresh and motion compensation with the estimated motion vector and compare the simulation results. This method will be useful in video communication in error Prone environment such as WCDMA networks.

Error-Resilient Performance of Dirac Video Codec Over Packet-Erasure Channel

Video transmission over the wireless or wired network requires error-resilient mechanism since compressed video bitstreams are sensitive to transmission errors because of the use of predictive coding and variable length coding. This paper investigates the performance of a simple and low complexity error-resilient coding scheme which combines source and channel coding to protect compressed bitstream of wavelet-based Dirac video codec in the packet-erasure channel. By partitioning the wavelet transform coefficients of the motion-compensated residual frame into groups and independently processing each group using arithmetic and forward error correction (FEC) coding, Dirac could achieves the robustness to transmission errors by giving the video quality which is gracefully decreasing over a range of packet loss rates up to 30% when compared with conventional FEC only methods. Simulation results also show that the proposed scheme using multiple partitions can achieve up to 10 dB PSNR gain over its existing un-partitioned format. This paper also investigates the error-resilient performance of the proposed scheme in comparison with H.264 over packet-erasure channel.

Interpolated Candidate Motion Vectors for Boundary Matching Error Concealment Technique in Video

The pertinency of error concealment (EC) schemes to the encoder-decoder model makes them an attractive choice to conceal the effects of transmission errors in a compressed video bitstream. Among various EC techniques, boundary matching (BM) has been the most popular due to its distortion measure criterion to select the most appropriate motion vector (MV) for damaged macroblock among a set of candidate MVs (CMVs). In a scenario where error bursts do not extend to more than one frame of digital video, the performance of BM can be highly enhanced if the CMVs depend upon an interpolation of surrounding MVs. This interpolation needs to be done, considering the change in their pattern from the reference to the current erroneous frame. This brief proposes a technique to build this novel set of CMVs and compares the results of BM with traditional CMVs qualitatively and quantitatively for MPEG test sequences

Drift-free switching of compressed video bitstreams at predictive frames

Two schemes are proposed to efficiently compress video contents into bitstreams that support drift-free switching at predictive frames. They are inspired by the original SP coding scheme presented in the early H.26L. First, we propose a Flex SP coding scheme in which the prediction signal of the SP frame is directly subtracted from the input without quantization and de-quantization. The decoded video quality of the Flex SP scheme is significantly improved when additional inverse discrete cosine transform (DCT) and post-filter are provided. Then, the Hybrid SP scheme is presented to further improve the quality of the display image, as well as the reconstructed reference, by defining two coding modes for each DCT coefficient. Moreover, a rate-distortion algorithm is proposed to determine the coding mode for each coefficient. The bitstreams generated by the two proposed schemes can be decoded successfully by a decoder that complies with MPEG-4 AVC/H.264. In addition, we also investigate how to choose the quantization parameters for switching. An empirical method is proposed to achieve a good tradeoff between high coding efficiency of SP frames and small size of switching bits.

Dynamic rate shaping of compressed digital video

We discuss new theoretical and experimental results on the dynamic rate shaping (DRS) approach for transcoding compressed video bitstreams (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.261, as well as JPEG). We analyze the behavior of DRS assuming a first order autoregressive source. We propose a set of low complexity algorithms for both constrained and unconstrained DRS and substantiate the almost-optimal experimental performance of the memoryless algorithm by assuming a first order autoregressive source. By deriving the statistical and rate-distortion characteristics of different components of the interframe rate shaping problem, we offer an explanation as to why the set of optimal breakpoint values for any frame is somewhat invariant to the accumulated motion compensated shaping error from past frames. We also present an extensive experimental study on the various DRS algorithms (causally optimal, memoryless, and rate-based) both in their constrained and generalized forms. The study proves the computational viability of the DRS approach to transcoding and identifies a range of rate shaping ratios for which it is better than requantization, both complexity-wise as well as in performance. This result is significant in that it opens up the way to construct much simpler memoryless algorithms that give minimal penalty in achieved quality, not just for this but possibly other types of algorithms. This is also the very first use of matrix perturbation theory for tracking the spectral behavior of the autocorrelation matrix of the source signal and the motion residual it yields.

Modeling packet-loss visibility in MPEG-2 video

We consider the problem of predicting packet loss visibility in MPEG-2 video. We use two modeling approaches: CART and GLM. The former classifies each packet loss as visible or not; the latter predicts the probability that a packet loss is visible. For each modeling approach, we develop three methods, which differ in the amount of information available to them. A reduced reference method has access to limited information based on the video at the encoder's side and has access to the video at the decoder's side. A no-reference pixel-based method has access to the video at the decoder's side but lacks access to information at the encoder's side. A no-reference bitstream-based method does not have access to the decoded video either; it has access only to the compressed video bitstream, potentially affected by packet losses. We design our models using the results of a subjective test based on 1080 packet losses in 72 minutes of video.

Comparative analysis of a twin-class M-QAM transmission system for wireless video applications

This paper presents a unique set of techniques to support reliable and efficient video transmission over mobile channels. The transmission system is comprised of an M level Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) technique. A twin class uniform and non-uniform partitioned M-QAM system is used to transport a compressed video bitstream which is partitioned to match the bit-error sensitivity of the transmitted symbol in terms of mapping in the constellation diagram and picture quality. Video partitioning based on a separation of the Variable Length Coded (VLC) Discrete Cosine Transforms (DCT) coefficients within each block is considered for constant bitrate transmission (CBR). Various scenarios for splitting the bitstream are investigated and their results are compared and analysed thoroughly. The performance of the transmission system is evaluated under Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) conditions. The simulation results showed that the video partition strategy results in a significantly higher quality of the reconstructed video data.

Temporal error concealment algorithm by recursive block-matching principle

Compressed video bitstream is sensitive to channel errors that may degrade the reconstructed pictures severely. Error concealment is an effective approach to reduce the impact of errors, and it is implemented at the decoders. Its aim is to mask the effect of the missing blocks to create image or video of subjectively acceptable quality by using the spatial or/and temporal correlation. This paper proposes a temporal error concealment method that exploits the temporal redundancy of a video sequence using a block-matching approach. A recursive block-matching algorithm, based on the two-step block-matching principle, is presented to refine the concealed video. The proposed algorithm can also conceal the multiple erroneous slices. The proposed algorithm outperforms the algorithms presented in previous studies.

High Performance Spatial and Temporal Error-Concealment Algorithms for Block-Based Video Coding Techniques

A compressed video bitstream is sensitive to errors that may severely degrade the reconstructed images even when the bit error rate is small. One approach to combat the impact of such errors is the use of error concealment at the decoder without increasing the bit rate or changing the encoder. For spatial-error concealment, we propose a method featuring edge continuity and texture preservation as well as low computation to reconstruct more visually acceptable images. Aiming at temporal error concealment, we propose a two-step algorithm based on block matching principles in which the assumption of smooth and uniform motion for some adjacent blocks is adopted. As simulation results show, the proposed spatial and temporal methods provide better reconstruction quality for damaged images than other methods.

Improved Bit Rate Control for Real-Time MPEG Watermarking

The alteration of compressed video bitstream due to embedding of digital watermark tends to produce unpredictable video bit rate variations which may in turn lead to video playback buffer overflow/underflow or transmission bandwidth violation problems. This paper presents a novel bit rate control technique for real-time MPEG watermarking applications. In our experiments, spread spectrum watermarks are embedded in the quantized DCT domain without requantization and motion reestimation to achieve fast watermarking. The proposed bit rate control scheme evaluates the combined bit lengths of a set of multiple watermarked VLC codewords, and successively replaces watermarked VLC codewords having the largest increase in bit length with their corresponding unmarked VLC codewords until a target bit length is achieved. The proposed method offers flexibility and scalability, which are neglected by similar works reported in the literature. Experimental results show that the proposed bit rate control scheme is effective in meeting the bit rate targets and capable of improving the watermark detection robustness for different video contents compressed at different bit rates.

Low-Complexity and High-Quality Frame-Skipping Transcoder for Continuous Presence Multipoint Video Conferencing

This paper presents a new frame-skipping transcoding approach for video combiners in multipoint video conferencing. Transcoding is regarded as a process of converting a previously compressed video bitstream into a lower bitrate bitstream. A high transcoding ratio may result in an unacceptable picture quality when the incoming video bitstream is transcoded with the full frame rate. Frame skipping is often used as an efficient scheme to allocate more bits to representative frames, so that an acceptable quality for each frame can be maintained. However, the skipped frame must be decompressed completely, and should act as the reference frame to the nonskipped frame for reconstruction. The newly quantized DCT coefficients of prediction error need to be recomputed for the nonskipped frame with reference to the previous nonskipped frame; this can create an undesirable complexity in the real time application as well as introduce re-encoding error. A new frame-skipping transcoding architecture for improved picture quality and reduced complexity is proposed. The proposed architecture is mainly performed on the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain to achieve a low complexity transcoder. It is observed that the re-encoding error is avoided at the frame-skipping transcoder when the strategy of direct summation of DCT coefficients is employed. By using the proposed frame-skipping transcoder and dynamically allocating more frames to the active participants in video combining, we are able to make more uniform peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) performance of the subsequences and the video qualities of the active subsequences can be improved significantly.

Transactions - Drift compensation for reduced spatial resolution transcoding: a summary

This paper discusses the problem of reduced-resolution transcoding of compressed video bitstreams. An analysis of drift errors is provided to identify the sources of quality degradation when transcoding to a lower spatial resolution. Two types of drift error are considered: a reference picture error, which has been identified in previous works, and error due to the noncommutative property of motion compensation and down-sampling, which is unique to this work. To overcome these sources of error, four novel architectures are presented. One architecture attempts to compensate for the reference picture error in the reduced resolution, while another architecture attempts to do the same in the original resolution. We present a third architecture that attempts to eliminate the second type of drift error and a final architecture that relies on an intrablock refresh method to compensate for all types of errors. In all of these architectures, a variety of macroblock level conversions are required, such as motion vector mapping and texture down-sampling. These conversions are discussed in detail. Another important issue for the transcoder is rate control. This is especially important for the intra-refresh architecture since it must find a balance between number of intrablocks used to compensate for errors and the associated rate-distortion characteristics of the low-resolution signal. The complexity and quality of the architectures are compared. Based on the results, we find that the intra-refresh architecture offers the best tradeoff between quality and complexity and is also the most flexible.

No reference PSNR estimation for compressed pictures

Many user-end applications require an estimate of the quality of coded video or images without having access to the original, i.e. a no-reference quality metric. Furthermore, in many such applications the compressed video bitstream is also not available. This paper describes methods for using the statistical properties of intra coded video data to estimate the quantization error caused by compression without accessing either the original pictures or the bitstream. We derive closed form expressions for the quantization error in coding schemes based on the discrete cosine transform and block based coding. A commonly used quality metric, the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) is subsequently computed from the estimated quantization error. Since quantization error is the most significant loss incurred during typical coding schemes, the estimated PSNR, or any PSNR-based quality metric may be used to gauge the overall quality of the pictures.

후보벡터 분류에 의한 영상 에러 복원

In transmitting compressed video bit-stream over Internet, packet loss causes error propagation in both spatial and temporal domain, which in turn leads to severe degradation in image quality. In this paper, a new approach for the recovery of lost or erroneous Motion Vector(MV)s by classifying the movements of neighboring blocks by their homogeneity is proposed. MVs of neighboring blocks are classified according to the direction of MVs and a representative value for each class is determined to obtain the candidate MV set. By computing the distortion of the candidates, a MV with the minimum distortion is selected. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm exhibits better performance in many cases than existing methods.

Error concealment techniques for digital TV

Compressed video bitstreams are intended for real-time transmission over communication networks. Most of the video coding standards employ the temporal and spatial prediction structure to reduce the transmitted video data. Therefore, the coded video bitstreams are highly sensitive to information loss and channel errors. Even a single bit error can lead to disastrous quality degradation in both time and space. This quality deterioration is exacerbated when no error resilient coding mechanism is employed to protect coded video data against the error prone environments. Error concealment is a data recovery technique that enables the decoder to conceal effects of transmission errors by predicting the lost or corrupted video data from the previously reconstructed error-free information. Motion vector recovery and motion compensation with the estimated motion vector is a good approach to conceal the corrupted macroblock data. In this paper, we develop various error concealment algorithms based on motion vector recovery, and compare their performances to those of conventional error concealment methods.

Drift compensation for reduced spatial resolution transcoding

This paper discusses the problem of reduced-resolution transcoding of compressed video bitstreams. An analysis of drift errors is provided to identify the sources of quality degradation when transcoding to a lower spatial resolution. Two types of drift error are considered: a reference picture error, which has been identified in previous works, and error due to the noncommutative property of motion compensation and down-sampling, which is unique to this work. To overcome these sources of error, four novel architectures are presented. One architecture attempts to compensate for the reference picture error in the reduced resolution, while another architecture attempts to do the same in the original resolution. We present a third architecture that attempts to eliminate the second type of drift error and a final architecture that relies on an intrablock refresh method to compensate for all types of errors. In all of these architectures, a variety of macroblock level conversions are required, such as motion vector mapping and texture down-sampling. These conversions are discussed in detail. Another important issue for the transcoder is rate control. This is especially important for the intra-refresh architecture since it must find a balance between number of intrablocks used to compensate for errors and the associated rate-distortion characteristics of the low-resolution signal. The complexity and quality of the architectures are compared. Based on the results, we find that the intra-refresh architecture offers the best tradeoff between quality and complexity and is also the most flexible.

CIF-to-QCIF video bitstream down-conversion in the DCT domain

Many advanced video applications require converting a compressed video bitstream from the Common Intermediate Format (CIF) to the Quarter Common Intermediate Format (QCIF). This task could be performed in the pixel domain or in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain. In this paper, we propose a DCT-domain approach, which requires lower complexity than that in the pixel domain. We also propose a scheme for selecting a coding mode and a motion vector for a macroblock (MB) in a QCIF video sequence from those of the corresponding CIF video without motion estimation (ME), which is computationally very expensive. Simulation results show that our DCT-domain approach reduces computational complexity by about 40% compared to the pixel-domain approach while providing comparable picture quality with about 0.4 dB degradation.

Local bandwidth constrained fast inverse motion compensation for DCT-domain video transcoding

Discrete cosine transform (DCT) based digital video coding standards, such as MPEG and H.26x, are becoming more widely adopted for multimedia applications. Since the standards differ in their format and syntax, video transcoding, where a compressed video bit-stream is converted from one format to another, is of interest for purposes such as channel bandwidth adaptation and video composition. DCT-domain video transcoding is generally more efficient than spatial-domain transcoding. However, since the data is organized block by block in the DCT domain, inverse motion compensation becomes the bottleneck for DCT-domain methods. We propose a novel local bandwidth constrained fast inverse motion compensation algorithm operating in the DCT domain. Relative to Chang's algorithm, we achieve computational improvement of 25%-55% without visual degradation. A by-product of our algorithm is a reduction of blocking artifacts in very low bit-rate compressed video sequences. The proposed algorithm can be combined with other reported fast methods for more computational savings. We also present a look-up-table (LUT) based implementation method by modeling the statistical distribution of the DCT coefficients in natural images and video sequences. By this method, we obtain a further 31%-48% improvement in computation. The memory requirement of the LUT is about 800 kB, which is reasonable. Moreover, the LUT can be shared by multiple DCT-domain video processing applications running on the same computer or video server.

A full-featured, error-resilient, scalable wavelet video codec based on the set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) algorithm

Compressed video bitstreams require protection from channel errors in a wireless channel. The 3-D set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) coder has proved its efficiency and its real-time capability in the compression of video. A forward-error-correcting (FEC) channel (RCPC) code combined with a single automatic-repeat request (ARQ) proved to be an effective means for protecting the bitstream. There were two problems with this scheme: (1) the noiseless reverse channel ARQ may not be feasible in practice and (2) in the absence of channel coding and ARQ, the decoded sequence was hopelessly corrupted even for relatively clean channels. We eliminate the need for ARQ by making the 3-D SPIHT bitstream more robust and resistant to channel errors. We first break the wavelet transform into a number of spatio-temporal tree blocks which can be encoded and decoded independently by the 3-D SPIHT algorithm. This procedure brings the added benefit of parallelization of the compression and decompression algorithms, and enables implementation of region-based coding. We demonstrate the packetization of the bitstream and the reorganization of these packets to achieve scalability in bit rate and/or resolution in addition to robustness. Then we encode each packet with a channel code. Not only does this protect the integrity of the packets in most cases, but it also allows detection of packet-decoding failures, so that only the cleanly recovered packets are reconstructed. In extensive comparative tests, the reconstructed video is shown to be superior to that of MPEG-2, with the margin of superiority growing substantially as the channel becomes noisier. Furthermore, the parallelization makes possible real-time implementation in hardware and software.

Pilot-assisted 16-level QAM for wireless video

This paper presents a twin-class transmission system for narrowband radio access channels suitable for handheld video phone and multimedia portable PC applications. The transmission system is comprised of a hierarchical 16-QAM modulation technique and a channel-coding scheme. The formation of dual-priority transmission is due to differing error resiliencies of the bits that make up a given symbol in a Gray-coded 16-QAM. On this basis, a twin-class pilot-assisted fade-estimation technique that can gracefully reduce the power loss caused by the transmission of pilot overhead is developed. The twin-class 16-QAM system is then used to transport a compressed video bitstream, which is partitioned to match the bit-error sensitivity of the transmitted symbol. The partitioning scheme is based on a separation of the variable-length (VL) coded discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients within each DCT block. This partitioning scheme is then applied to split the ITU-T H.263-coded bitstream. The scheme is suitable for constant bit-rate transmission (CBR), where the fraction of bits assigned to each of the two partitions can be adjusted according to the requirements of the unequal error protection scheme employed. The distribution of the VL-coded (VLC) information amongst the two partitions is performed adaptively. Finally, the performance of the partitioning scheme for transmission of video signals using our twin-class 16-QAM transmission system is evaluated under multipath fading conditions.