Geometrically determining the leaky bucket parameters for video streaming over constant bit-rate channels

For streaming of pre-encoded bitstreams over constant bit rate (CBR) channels, the channel bandwidth, the receiver buffer capacity as well as the latency requirement vary greatly from application to application. In this paper, we attempt to determine the minimum buffer size and the minimum start-up delay required for streaming a pre-encoded bitstream over CBR channels at any specific bit rate. The proposed method employs geometric operations to derive the optimal determination for low or high bit rates and sub-optimal determination for medium bit rates. The algorithm developed requires little extra information from the encoder and is easy to implement. Our algorithm is implemented in a H.264/AVC video encoder and its performance is compared with that of H.264/AVC hypothetical reference decoder. Our approach provides new theoretical insight and an excellent solution for determining the leaky bucket parameters for video streaming over CBR channels.     

A novel rate control algorithm for video coding based on fuzzy-PID controller

Rate control algorithms (RCAs) aim to achieve the best visual quality under the minimum bit rate and the limited buffer size. A self-parameter-tuning fuzzy-PID controller is proposed to reduce the deviation between the target buffer level and the current buffer fullness. Fuzzy logic is used to tune each parameter of the proportional-integral-derivative controller by selecting appropriate fuzzy rules through simulation in H.264/advanced video coding (AVC). To control the quality fluctuation between consecutive frames, a quality controller is adopted. The proposed RCA has been implemented in an H.264/AVC video codec, and our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves smooth target bits while enabling better buffer control and visual quality.     

Efficient error resilient algorithm for H.264/AVC: mobility management in wireless video streaming

The H.264/AVC standard introduces enhanced error robustness capabilities enabling resilient and reliable transmission of compressed video signals over wireless lossy packet networks. Those robustness capabilities are achieved by integrating some new error resilience tools that are essential for a proper delivery of real-time video services. Those tools include the Intra Refreshing (IR), Arbitrary Slice Ordering (ASO), Sequence Picture Parameter Sets (PPS), Redundant Slices (RS) tools and Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO). This paper presents an error resilient algorithm in wireless H.264/AVC streaming. The proposed method merges Reference Frame Selection (RFS), Intra Redundancy Slice and Adaptive Intra Refreshment techniques in order to prevent temporal error propagation in error-phone wireless video streaming. The coding standards only specify the decoding process and the bitstream syntax to allow considerable flexibility for the designers to optimize the encoder for coding performance improvement and complexity reduction. Performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed encoding algorithm outperforms the conventional H.264/AVC standard. Both subjective and objective visual quality comparative study has been also carried out in order to validate the proposed approach. The proposed method can be used and integrated into H264/AVC without violating the standard.     

SSIM-based error-resilient rate-distortion optimization of H.264/AVC video coding for wireless streaming

The SSIM-based rate-distortion optimization (RDO) has been verified to be an effective tool for H.264/AVC to promote the perceptual video coding performance. However, the current SSIM-based RDO is not efficient for improving the perceptual quality of the video streaming application over the error-prone network, because it does not consider the transmission induced distortion in the encoding process. In this paper, a SSIM-based error-resilient RDO scheme for H.264/AVC is proposed to improve the wireless video streaming performance. Firstly, with the help of the SSE-based RDO, we present a low-complexity Lagrange multiplier decision method for the SSIM-based RDO video coding in the error-free environment. Then, the SSIM-based decoding distortion of the user end is estimated at the encoder and is correspondingly introduced into the RDO to involve the transmission induced distortion into the encoding process. Further, the Lagrange multiplier is theoretically derived to optimize the encoding mode selection in the error-resilient RDO process. Experimental results show that the proposed SSIM-based error-resilient RDO can obtain superior perceptual video quality (more structural information) to the traditional SSE-based error-resilient RDO for wireless video streaming at the same bit rate condition.     

Novel rate control scheme for intra frame video coding with exponential rate–distortion model on H.264/AVC

Rate control regulates the output bit rate of a video encoder in order to obtain optimum visual quality within the available network bandwidth and to maintain buffer fullness within a specified tolerance range. Due to the benefits of intra-only encoding, such as less computational cost and less latency, it has been more and more widely used. In this paper, we propose an accurate intra-only rate control scheme for H.264/AVC, which includes a novel complexity measurement and a new rate–distortion (R–D) model. We also propose a linear rate–complexity model which takes the intercept into consideration to reduce the estimation error. The proposed R–D model is integrated by the linear rate–complexity model and an exponential rate–quantization model. Based on theoretical analysis and experimental validation, the proposed scheme has high bits prediction precision, and it can also accurately handle buffer fullness. Compared with JVT-W042, our algorithm achieves higher average PSNR and improves the coding quality up to 0.35 dB.     

基于H.264编码的多屏共享系统研究

H.264/AVC是一种由ITU-T视频编码专家组合ISO/IEC JTC1动态图像专家组联合提出的高度压缩视频编码器标准。然而H.264/AVC编码器较高的运算复杂度提高了多屏共享系统的延迟时间。H.264/AVC由多种开源的实现,其中X264因简单高效而得到广泛的应用。在此对多频共享系统的关键技术进行实现,分析X264编码器提供的运动估计算法并且提出一种优化的算法。实验表明,新的算法提高了编码的速度、减少了系统延迟时间,同时视频质量几乎没有产生损失。     

一种面向H.264/AVC的码率控制算法

码率控制是视频编码中非常重要的技术之一,任何标准离开码率控制其应用都会受到限制.H.264/AVC是目前最新的视频编码标准,本文根据H.264/AVC编码标准的特性及其HRD部分对码率控制的要求,提出了一种新的适合H.264/AVC的码率控制算法,该算法实现了率失真优化与码率控制的结合,使得在达到码率控制的同时也能保证较高的编码效率,同时在码率控制的过程中根据HRD缓冲区状态进行位分配调整,保证了编解码缓冲区既不上溢又不下溢.该算法作为技术提案已被H.264/AVC接受,并集成到H.264/AVC的校验模型软件中.     

Arbitrary Frame Rate Transcoding Through Temporal and Spatial Complexity

In this paper, an arbitrary frame rate transcoding joint considering temporal and spatial complexity of frames in the adaptive length sliding window is proposed. The length of a sliding window can be adjusted according to bandwidth variation in order to decide the number of skipped frames. The proposed method preserves significant frames and drops non-significant ones using the complexity measurements. Moreover, the motion vector composition algorithm is proposed to reduce the computations of motion estimation process by adopting the coding feature of variable block sizes in H.264/AVC video transcoder. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves higher visual quality compared to other existing methods. After combining with the proposed fast motion composition algorithm, our proposed algorithm reduces encoding time significantly with slight visual quality degradation.      

一种基于滑动窗的自适应帧率控制策略

主要针对H.264/AVC视频编码技术,提出了一种基于滑动窗的自适应帧率控制策略,用来提供更好的编码效率.不同于常用的时域均匀下采样帧率控制策略,该策略采用滑动窗技术以及帧间MAD实时侦测视频序列的运动情况,并相应地改变跳帧间隔,从而达到自适应的帧率控制.最后将该方法与均匀间隔下采样的帧率控制技术在采用H.264/AVC视频编码技术和CBR信道的情况下进行了比较实验,验证了该策略具有更好的编码效果.     

融合宏块平坦度和时空相关性的预测模式选择算法

H.264/AVC以巨大编码复杂度为代价,在获得更高压缩率的同时,编码实时性也随之降低。针对视频编码中重要且耗时的帧间预测技术,分析了宏块平坦度和时空相关性,提出了一种快速的预测模式选择算法。仿真实验结果表明,本文提出算法与H.264/AVC(JM12.2)标准算法相比,在保持重建视频图像质量和输出码流结构的前提下,平均节省约70%的编码时间,并继承了H.264/AVC低码率的编码优势。     

Adaptive quantization-parameter clip scheme for smooth quality in H.264/AVC

In this paper, we investigate the issues over the smooth quality and the smooth bit rate during rate control (RC) in H.264/AVC. An adaptive quantization-parameter (Q(p)) clip scheme is proposed to optimize the quality smoothness while keeping the bit-rate fluctuation at an acceptable level. First, the frame complexity variation is studied by defining a complexity ratio between two nearby frames. Second, the range of the generated bits is analyzed to prevent the encoder buffer from overflow and underflow. Third, based on the safe range of the generated bits, an optimal Q(p) clip range is developed to reduce the quality fluctuation. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed Q(p) clip scheme can achieve excellent performance in quality smoothness and buffer regulation.     

Rate control based on linear regression for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC

An efficient rate control algorithm is required to transmit coded video sequences without abrupt changes in quality due to the limited channel bandwidth. Thus, in this paper, an efficient rate control method is proposed for the H.264/MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) baseline profile that meets the above constraint by using a ρ-domain source model. Firstly, a simple target bits determination method that considers the ideal buffer level is proposed, and secondly, a method of adequately determining the Quantization Parameter (QP) is presented using two kinds of linear regression. The experimental results show that the proposed rate control algorithm using the above two methods performs better than other rate control algorithms for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC in terms of the rate estimation error and the standard deviation of the Peak Signal-to- Noise Ratio (PSNR), which provides a measure of the constancy of the video quality throughout the whole video sequence.     

一种基于视觉显著度模型的无线视频码率控制算法(英文)

In order to further improve the efficiency of video compression, we introduce a perceptual characteristics of Human Visual System (HVS) to video coding, and propose a novel video coding rate control algorithm based on human visual saliency model in H.264/AVC. Firstly, we modifie Itti's saliency model. Secondly, target bits of each frame are allocated through the correlation of saliency region between the current and previous frame, and the complexity of each MB is modified through the saliency value and its...     

H.264/SVC vs. H.264/AVC video quality comparison under QoE-driven seamless handoff

This paper studies the impact of mobility management and seamless handover mechanisms on the perceived quality of video streaming applications. A seamless handoff scheme is proposed that incorporates IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover framework and a QoE-driven rate adaptation scheme, for both scalable and single layer coding. Quality of Experience (QoE) has been considered as an important parameter for network selection. The proposed scheme has been implemented and evaluated in a real test-bed network. Objective and subjective quality evaluation measurements for both H.264/AVC and H.264/SVC have been carried out. Through experimentation, QoE driven mobility of video streaming can be better maintained with H.264/SVC under the combined seamless handoff and rate adaptation functionality.     

Robust Video Watermarking of H.264/AVC

A robust video watermarking scheme of the state-of-the-art video coding standard H.264/AVC is proposed in this brief. 2-D 8-bit watermarks such as detailed company trademarks or logos can be used as inconvertible watermark for copyright protection. A grayscale watermark pattern is first modified to accommodate the H.264/AVC computational constraints, and then embedded into video data in the compressed domain. With the proposed method, the video watermarking scheme can achieve high robustness and good visual quality without increasing the overall bit-rate. Experimental results show that our algorithm can robustly survive transcoding process and strong common signal processing attacks, such as bit-rate reduction, Gaussian filtering and contrast enhancement     

Encoder adaptable difference detection for low power video compression in surveillance system

As a state-of-the-art video compression technique, H.264/AVC has been deployed in many surveillance cameras to improve the compression efficiency. However, it induces very high coding complexity, and thus high power consumption. In this paper, a difference detection algorithm is proposed to reduce the computational complexity and power consumption in surveillance video compression by automatically distributing the video data to different modules of the video encoder according to their content similarity features. Without any requirement in changing the encoder hardware, the proposed algorithm provides high adaptability to be integrated into the existing H.264 video encoders. An average of over 82% of overall encoding complexity can be reduced regardless of whether or not the H.264 encoder itself has employed fast algorithms. No loss is observed in both subjective and objective video quality.     

H.264/AVC基本档次编码器实现时域可伸缩编码的方法

提出一种在H.264/AVC基本档次编码器中实现时域可伸缩编码的方案,该方案通过H.264/AVC标准所提供的多参考帧和内存管理控制操作机制来实现。对于现有的H.264/AVC解码器,不需任何修改,即可直接解码由本方案生成的时域可伸缩码流。     

A linear rate control model for better target buffer level tracking in H.264

An improved rate control scheme with better buffer level tracking and more accurate mean absolute difference (MAD) prediction for H.264 video encoding is proposed in this work. Compared to the existing H.264 rate control scheme, the proposed scheme gives better buffer regulation with improved peak signal-to-noise ratio for basic unit level rate control. The bits required for encoding header information account for a significantly high percentage of the total bits, especially at lower bit rate and for low motion sequences. A linear relation between coded mean absolute difference and header bits is proposed for achieving effective rate control. The proposed scheme estimates the mean absolute difference adaptively from temporally colocated regions and INTER16x16 mode decision process. The estimated mean absolute difference is then used for calculating the quantization parameter for better target matching. A new linear rate control model is proposed, which works well especially for low motion sequences. The experimental results show that the proposed improvement in rate control algorithm significantly reduces the difference between actual and target buffer level while improving the quality of encoded video sequences.     

Hierarchical Optimization of Cascading Error Protection Scheme for H.264 Scalable Video Streaming

Forward error correction (FEC) coding has been shown to offer a feasible solution to fulfill the need for Quality of Service for multimedia streaming over the fluctuant channels, especially in terms of the reduction of end-to-end delay. In this paper, we propose the Dynamic FEC-Distortion Optimization Algorithm to efficiently utilize the network bandwidth for better visual quality by means of hierarchical coding structure with the cascading error protection scheme. The optimization criteria are based on the unequal error protection by taking account of the error drifting problems from both temporal motion compensation and inter-layer prediction of the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC scalable video coding so that the priorities of each video components can be differentiated for the calculation of the distribution of parity packets. It is shown that the cascading error protection scheme makes the hierarchical structure of error erasure code more efficient. Also, the proposed algorithm works particularly well for fast motion videos and the performance does not depend on accurate estimation of packet loss rate.     

Requantization transcoding for H.264/AVC video coding

In this paper, efficient solutions for requantization transcoding in H.264/AVC are presented. By requantizing residual coefficients in the bitstream, different error components can appear in the transcoded video stream. Firstly, a requantization error is present due to successive quantization in encoder and transcoder. In addition to the requantization error, the loss of information caused by coarser quantization will propagate due to dependencies in the bitstream. Because of the use of intra prediction and motion-compensated prediction in H.264/AVC, both spatial and temporal drift propagation arise in transcoded H.264/AVC video streams. The spatial drift in intra-predicted blocks results from mismatches in the surrounding prediction pixels as a consequence of requantization. In this paper, both spatial and temporal drift components are analyzed. As is shown, spatial drift has a determining impact on the visual quality of transcoded video streams in H.264/AVC. In particular, this type of drift results in serious distortion and disturbing artifacts in the transcoded video stream. In order to avoid the spatially propagating distortion, we introduce transcoding architectures based on spatial compensation techniques. By combining the individual temporal and spatial compensation approaches and applying different techniques based on the picture and/or macroblock type, overall architectures are obtained that provide a trade-off between computational complexity and rate-distortion performance. The complexity of the presented architectures is significantly reduced when compared to cascaded decoder–encoder solutions, which are typically used for H.264/AVC transcoding. The reduction in complexity is particularly large for the solution which uses spatial compensation only. When compared to traditional solutions without spatial compensation, both visual and objective quality results are highly improved.