Multimedia Communication

MPEG readies the standard for rich user experiences in internet television

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:59:00 +0000

--taken from here

Xian, China – The 90^th MPEG meeting was held in Xian, China from the 26^thto the 30^th of October.

Highlights of the 90th Meeting

MPEG paves the way for the representation of metadata to enhance the IPTV user experience

MPEG has completed the final standardization (ISO/IEC 14496-20 AMD3) of the technologies enabling the integration of metadata for the creation of rich user experiences for multimedia services such as IPTV. For IPTV services, the provisioning of services and content using very detailed metadata is of primary importance, and the key to success is to provide a rich representation of such information to enable the user to select among these services and content based on their personal interests. The new standard will facilitate the easy and efficient integration of the structured metadata used for this purpose.

Reference software standard is now available for Professional Archival Application format

MPEG has delivered the final reference software standard for the Professional Archival Application Format (ISO/IEC 23000-6) which defines a packaging format for digital files. This standard will fulfill the industry need for an interoperable multimedia content archival format for the preservation of multimedia content. Several advanced features of the standard include comprehensive metadata to model all information necessary to support and preserve digital files, a flexible mechanism to pre-process digital files prior to their storage in archives, and a robust file format to allow easy access to both metadata and archived files.

MPEG amends its query format for efficient web search requests

MPEG has completed the first step toward enhancing its query format standard for fast and efficient web search requests. The MPEG Query Format standard (ISO/IEC 15923-12) or MPQF defines three main components: the Input Query Format to describe query requests to multimedia retrieval systems, the Output Query Format, a message container for retrieval results, and the Query Management Tools supporting service discovery, service aggregation and service capability descriptions. A new amendment to MPQF will enable the retrieval of data from an ontology (a rigorous representation of web data that describes the relationships amongst these data to facilitate their efficient retrieval) adding semantic expressions that can be used in request and result data representations, as well as a query type for SPARQL, a language supporting semantic web environment.

MMT workshop targets requirements and technologies for streaming of MPEG content

The Workshop for MPEG Media Transport (MMT) will be held on 20 January 2010 during the 91^st MPEG meeting at the Kyoto Research Park in Kyoto, Japan. The purpose of this event is to gather new requirements, use cases, and contributions related to the transport of multimedia content over heterogeneous networks. In particular, MPEG is gathering information on current limitations of available standards and new technologies in the area of media progressive download and streaming, delivery of MPEG media across emerging network environments, quality of service/experience as well as cross layer technologies.

MPEG plans to start a new standardization project on MMT with a Call for Proposals to be issued at the 91st meeting. The new standard is planned to reach the Final Draft International Standard stage in July 2011.

The MMT workshop is also free of charge. For more information, visit http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm

Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technology that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. The experts past and present have contributed a series of white-papers that explain each of these standards individually. The repository is growing with each meeting, so if something you are interested is not there yet, it may appear there shortly – but you should also not hesitate to request it. You can start your MPEG adventure at: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/mpeg-tech.htm

Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

No. 91, Kyoto, JP, 18-22 January, 2010
No. 92, Dresden, DE, 19-23 April, 2010
No. 93, Geneva, CH, 26-30 July, 2010
No. 94, Guangzhou, CN, 11-15 October, 2010

For further information about MPEG, please contact:

mailto:leonardo@chiariglione.org

Dr. Arianne T. Hinds
Ricoh | IBM InfoPrint Solutions Company
6300 Diagonal Highway, MS 04N
Boulder, CO 80301, USA
Tel +1 720 663 3565
Email: arianne.hinds@infoprint.com

This press release and other MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG homepage:

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg

The text and details related to the Calls mentioned above (together with other current Calls) are in the Hot News section, http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm . These documents include information on how to respond to the Calls.

The MPEG homepage also has links to other MPEG pages which are maintained by the MPEG subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available for download by those who are not MPEG members. Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email should contact Dr. Arianne T. Hinds using the contact information provided above.

Draft Call for Proposals on High-Performance Video Coding (HVC)

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:31:00 +0000

--excerpted from here!

Purpose: A new generation of video compression technology that has substantially higher compression capability than the existing AVC (ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10) standard is targeted (see [1][2] for background information).

Timeline:

2009/11/06: Draft CfP
2009/11/06: Availability of all test materials defined in Draft CfP (download information can be requested from contact persons)
2009/11/30: Availability of anchors
2010/01/15: Deadline for Pre-registration (mandatory): one of the contact persons (see Section 9) must be notified An invoice for the testing fee will be sent after pre-registration. Additional logistic information will also be sent to proponents by this date.
2010/01/22: Final Call for Proposals (Note: The Final Call may contain minor updates)
2010/02/15: Formal registration and payment of the fee
2010/02/22: Coded test material available at the test site (Note: People who formally registered will receive instructions regarding how to submit the coded materials)
2010/03/15: Subjective assessment starts at this date or sooner
2010/04/12: Registration of documents describing the proposals with contact persons
2010/04/13: Submission of documents to contact persons (Note: Contact persons will compile all proposal documents into one or more input documents and upload)
2010/04/16: Cross-checking of bitstreams and binary decoders (participation mandatory for proponents)
2010/04/17: Subjective test results available within standardization body
2010/04/17-23: Evaluation of proposals at standardization meeting (Note: Proponents are requested to attend this standardization meeting)

Anticipated tentative timeline after CfP
(refers to first version of the new standard, which may be extended later):

Core experiments begin 2010/04
Test model 2010/10
Final standard approval 2012/07

Test classes:

Class A: Cropped areas of size 2560x1600 taken from the following sequences (frame rates unchanged): First 5 s of "Traffic" (4096x2048p 30 fps), "PeopleOnStreet" (3840x2160p 30 fps).
Class B: 1920x1080p 24 fps: "ParkScene", "Kimono" and 1920x1080p 50-60 fps: "Cactus", "BasketballDrive", "BQTerrace"
Class C: 832x480p 30-60 fps (WVGA): "BasketballDrill", "BQMall", "PartyScene", "RaceHorses"
Class D: 416x240p 30-60 fps (WQVGA): "BasketballPass", "BQSquare", "BlowingBubbles", "RaceHorses"
Class E: 1280x720p 60fps: "Vidyo1", "Vidyo3" and "Vidyo4"

For further information about constraint sets, target rate points, and anchors, please go to directly the Draft CfP.

Test sites and fees:
The proposals submission material for Classes B, C and E will be evaluated by means of a formal subjective assessment process. The tests will be conducted at FUB (Test Coordinator, Rome, Italy), EBU (Geneva, Switzerland) and EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland).

Proponents will be charged a fee per submitted algorithm proposal. Such fee will be a flat charge for each proposal to cover the logistic cost (without any profit). The fee is non-refundable after the formal registration deadline has passed. The fee is estimated to be in the range of 4000 to 6000 Euros. The exact cost can only be determined after the number of submitted proposals is known, but over-payments will be reimbursed.

Additional requirements on submissions can be found here.

References:
[1] VCEG-AL96, Draft Requirements for Next Generation Video Coding, July 2009
[2] ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11, Vision and Requirements for High-Performance Video Coding, MPEG Document N10361, February 2009

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Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

MPEG's Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT) Ready for Take Off?

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:30:00 +0000

During its 90th meeting, MPEG remarkably revised and improved the requirements for the Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT) standard. Please see a previous post for an overview. The main objective of AIT is as follows and taken from N11070.

The AIT standard will support the service providers’ drive to deploy innovative multimedia services ... by identifying a set of “Basic Services” and defining the corresponding set of protocols and APIs to enable any user in an AIT value chain to access those services in an interoperable fashion.

Currently, requirements for 30 of these basic services have been defined which can be clustered in services pertaining to the identification, authentication, description, storage, adaptation, posting, packaging, delivery, presentation, interaction, aggregation, management, search, negotiation, and transaction. Furthermore, basic services can be grouped to so-called "Aggregated Services" enabling one to offer a bundle of services to someone else.

Interestingly, the requirements document also defines some "standard-related requirements" which are as follows:

The Standard shall be based on technologies from Recommendations | International Standards unless no Recommendation | International Standard provides a solution satisfying the Requirements
The Standard shall only reference, not specify technologies. If new technologies will be required they will be specified by appropriate standards. However, some “glue” specification may be needed for integrating the technologies
The Standard shall specify (a) protocols to enable users to call services, (b) Application Programming Interfaces to access services, (c) bindings to specific programming languages, and (d) informative examples of AIT devices (server and client).

In other words, MPEG will only make references to existing standards and if something is missing, will specify amendments in the respective existing standards and reference them from within AIT.

Okay, so what's now the list of basic services and their definitions. Note that each of the services have individual requirements and also a section about what is being requested by proponents including a list of candidate technologies developed by MPEG.

Identify User: A Service that identifies Users in an AIT value chain
Authenticate User: A Service that Authenticate Users in an AIT value chain
Describe User: A Service that allows Description of Users of an AIT value chain
Identify Content: A Service that allows Identification of Content in an AIT value chain
Authenticate Content: A Service that allows Authentication of Content in an AIT value chain
Describe Content: A Service that allows Users associate Metadata to Content in an AIT value chain
Store Content: A Service that allows Users in an AIT value chain physically saves Content
Adapt Content: A Service that allows Users in an AIT value chain to process Content, e.g. conversion from one format to another, on the fly, …
Post Content: A Service that lets Users of an AIT value chain make other Users aware of their Content including a way to access it, e.g. as putting URI in an EPG or in a web page
Package Content: A Service that allows Users of an AIT value chain to make Content ready for delivery, e.g. creating MPEG-21 file for a certain Content for download
Deliver Content: A Service that allows Users to transfer Content between Users of an AIT value chain
Present Content: A Service that allows Users to experience Content, e.g. when a Device decodes video into a sequence of images displayed on the screen
Interact with Content: A Service that allows Users interact with Content
Identify Service: A Service that allows Users to assign a unique Identifier to Services of an AIT value chain
Authenticate Service: A Service that allows Users to confirm the identity of a Service
Describe Service: A Service that allows Users to associate metadata to Services of an AIT value chain
Aggregate Service: A Service that allows Users to combine different Services at the technical level to an Aggregated Service of an AIT value chain
Identify Device: A Service that allows Users to assign a unique Identifier to Devices of an AIT value chain
Authenticate Device: A Service that allows Users to confirm the identity of a Device
Describe Device: A Service that allows Users to describe Devices of an AIT value chain
Manage License: A Service that handles the life cycle of a Licence for Users in an AIT value chain, e.g., to create, issue, authenticate (i.e., verify integrity and authenticity of the Licence), authorize (the Rights in), revoke and expire a Licence.
Manage Tool: A Service that handles the life cycle of a Tool in an AIT value chain, e.g., to create, identify, describe, deliver, install, authenticate, authorize (use of), uninstall and update a Tool
Manage Event: A Service that caters to the life cycle of Events in an AIT value chain, e.g., to request and report Events
Identify Group: A Service that allows Users to assign a unique Identifier to Groups of an AIT value chain
Describe Group: A Service that allows Users to describe Groups of an AIT value chain
Authenticate Group: A Service that allows Users to confirm the identity of a Group
Manage Group: A Service that allows Users to manage life cycle of groups of entities such as Users, Device, Contents, or Services, in an AIT value chain
Search Entity: A Service that locate Entities such as Users, Device, Contents, or Services, in an AIT value chain satisfying some criteria
Negotiate Entity: A Service that helps Users of an AIT value chain achieve an agreement on the terms of use of an Entity, e.g., rights and conditions to use Content, Service (e.g., Delivery, Adaptation)
Transact Entity: A Service that allows Users in an AIT value chain to interface with Payment and Cashing systems

Note that the terms used in the basic services are defined in the Annex of N11063.

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Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

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Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

MPEG Media Transport is taking shape

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:20:00 +0000

Achievements at the 90th MPEG meeting in Xi’an, China with respect to MPEG Media Transport (MMT):

Context & Objectives;
Ad-hoc Group; and
Future workshop in January 2010 on the Wednesday during the Kyoto meeting focusing on “adaptive progressive transport” and “cross-layer design”.

The first document, context & objectives, describes the scope of the standard based – as usual – on a number of use cases. These are adaptivity, delivery, QoS/QoE-awareness, convergence, and transparency which are briefly highlighted in the following:

Adaptivity is referred to adaptability of multimedia content towards the usage environment context in which the content is being used. Ultimately, this includes the end user and his environment but also the delivery and other areas.
Delivery differentiates between (traditional) IPTV, progressive download, and peer-to-peer delivery.
QoS/QoE-awareness refers to several optimization techniques which roughly can be clustered into application-level and cross-layer optimizations. The former is further divided into retransmission and buffer management as well as forward error correction (FEC). The latter can be categorized into bottom-up, top-down, and integrated approaches well-known from the research literature.
Convergence includes topics related to network convergence, i.e., media-aware devices, and service convergence.
Transparency is mainly referred to as transparency with respect to different content protection schemes and rights management systems.

The current requirements document, however, focuses on two main areas which are adaptive delivery and cross-layer optimization. A couple of general requirements (i.e., IMHO a wish list we all pretty much agree on) precede the requirements pertaining to these two selected topics which are listed below followed by my comments:

Anyway, all the technologies that will be submitted as a response to a call for proposals – most likely this will happen in April 2010 – will have to show evidence that they are better than their predecessors (i.e., MPEG-2 TS) but it is pretty much unclear how this evaluation is going to be performed.

Some people argue that the functionality of adaptive, progressive download could be achieved with (minor) extensions of the MP4 file format but is something the industry definitely needs right now. Therefore, solutions for this part of MMT shall be standardized without any delay, i.e., at maximum warp speed! In my view, such a requirement should be included in the list above although it is kind of obvious…

Cross-layer (XL) optimization is a research topic which is around for quite some time with pretty cool results. However, the results mainly stem from XL stuff being done at the lower layers, i.e., link layer and so on. So what MPEG can offer is to standardize an interface – parameter names & semantics – to XL optimization modules whereas these modules should be out-of-scope and left open for industry competition. A kind of interface that could be used for this purpose is Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI) – originally standardized during the course of the AVC (MPEG-4 Part 10 | H.264) developments – which nowadays can be included in MPEG-2 TS, file formats based on the ISO Base Media File Format, and also RTP. Thus, what is needed is simply a registration authority for SEI messages in the context of XL optimization. However, in order to represent advanced XL models, further standardization might be needed but we have already demonstrated how this could be accomplished existing MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation tools [1][2][3]. As in the case of SEI message, the only missing link is some kind of registration authority for parameter names and semantics which have not been considered when the standard has been finally approved – that was already in 2003.

Finally, I’d like to mention the Ad-hoc Group (AhG) where discussions between meetings take place and the workshop in January 2010 on the Wednesday during the Kyoto meeting focusing on “adaptive progressive transport” and “cross-layer design”. Details about the workshop you can find here. Note that usually such a workshop is open to everybody, i.e., you don’t need to be a member of ISO/MPEG in order to attend this workshop.

References:
[1] I. Kofler, C. Timmerer, H. Hellwagner, and T. Ahmed: “Towards MPEG-21-based Cross-layer Multimedia Content Adaptation”, Proc. 2nd International Workshop on Semantic Media Adaptation and Personalization (SMAP 2007), London, UK, Dec. 2007.
[2] C. Timmerer, V. H. Ortega, J. M. González, and A. León: “Measuring Quality of Experience for MPEG-21-based Cross-Layer Multimedia Content Adaptation”, to appear in Proceedings of the 1st ACS/IEEE International Workshop on Wireless Internet Services (WISe’08), Doha, Qatar, April 1-4, 2008.
[3] I. Kofler, J. Seidl, C. Timmerer, H. Hellwagner, I. Djama and T. Ahmed, “Using MPEG-21 for cross-layer multimedia content adaptation”, Journal on Signal, Image and Video Processing, Springer, vol. 2, no. 4, Dec. 2008.

MPEG news: a report from the 90th meeting in Xi'an, China

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:25:00 +0000

The 90th MPEG meeting in Xi’an, China is coming up with some very interesting news which are briefly highlighted here. First and, I think, most importantly, the timeline for the new MPEG/ITU-T video coding format has been discussed and it seems the final Call for Proposals (CfP) will be ready in January 2010. A draft CfP is available now and hopefully will be also publicly available if they solve all the editing issues until early November. This means that the proposals will be evaluated in April 2010 (note: this will be a busy meeting as a couple of other calls need to be evaluated too; see later). The CfP defines five classes of test sequences with the following characteristics (number of sequences available in brackets):

Class A with 2560x1600 cropped from 4Kx2K (2);
Class B with 1920x1080p at 24/50-60 fps (5);
Class C with 832x480 WVGA (4);
Class D with 416x240 WQVGA (4); and
Class E with 1280x720p at 50-60fps (3).

For classes B, C, and E subjective tests will be performed whereas classes A and D will be only evaluated objectively using PSNR. The reason for evaluating A and D using objective measurements is due to its insignificant subjective differences with B and C respectively. Finally, they’re still discussing about the actual common nickname name of the standard as it seems some are not happy with high-performance video coding but that’s yet another story…

Second, 3D video coding is still a major topic in MPEG but you probably need to wait yet another year until a Call for Proposals will be issued. That is, a 3DV standard will be probably available around the beginning of 2013 at the earliest. The major issue right now is the availability of content – as usual – and different device manufacturer standards with respect to 3D video.

The third major topic at this meeting was around AIT and MMT, two acronyms you shall become more familiar in the future. The former is referred to as Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT) and aims to develop an ecosystem for media value chains and networks. Therefore, basic (atomic) services will be defined including protocols (payload formats) to enable users to call these services, Application Programming Interfaces to access services, and bindings to specific programming languages. Currently, 30 of these basic services are foreseen which can be clustered in services pertaining to the identification, authentication, description, storage, adaptation, posting, packaging, delivery, presentation, interaction, aggregation, management, search, negotiation, and transaction. The timeline is similar as for HVC which means that proposals will be evaluated in April 2010. The latter is referred to as MPEG Media Transport (MMT) and basically aims to become a successor of the well-known MPEG-2 Transport Stream. Currently, two topics are explored for which also requirements have been formulated. The first topic covers adaptive, progressive transport and the second topic is in the area of cross-layer design. Further topics where this activity might look into are hybrid delivery and conversational services. As for HVC and AIT, the proposals are going to be evaluated in April 2010. However, in order to further refine this possible new work item, MPEG will held a workshop in January 2010 on the Wednesday during the Kyoto meeting focusing on “adaptive progressive transport” and “cross-layer design”.

However, MPEG is looking forward to a very busy meeting in April 2010 which by the way will be held in Dresden, Germany.

Another issue that has been discussed in Xi’an was (again) the development of a royalty free codec within MPEG. While some might say that within MPEG, trying to establish a royalty free codec is a first step towards failure, others argue that MPEG-1 is already royalty free, for MPEG-2 most patents expire in 2011, the Internet community is requesting this (e.g., IETF established coded group and Google has chosen On2, a royalty free codec), and, finally, MPEG-4 Part 10 royalty free baseline basically failed. Thus, maybe (or hopefully) this is the right time for a royalty free codec within MPEG and who can predict the future? Anyway, there’s some activity going on in this area and if you’re interested, stay tuned…

Finally, I’d like to note that MPEG-V (Media Context & Control) and MPEG-U (Rich Media User Interface) are progressing smoothly and both going hand in hand towards its finalization. This meeting, the FCDs have been approved which forms a major milestone as this was the last chance for substantial new contributions. One such input was related to advanced user interaction like the Wiimote, etc. which will become part of MPEG-V but used also by MPEG-U. Hence, one might argue merging these two standards into one single standard called MPEG-W (i.e., U+V=W) and a wedding ceremony could be performed at the next meeting in Kyoto with Geishas as witnesses … why not? Please raise your voice now or be silent forever!

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Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

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Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

MMEDIA 2010

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Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The 91st ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 Kyoto Meeting

Streaming Movies to Playstation 3

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:45:00 +0000

The New York Times reports that in the future - next month - movies will be streamed to Sony's Playstation 3 (PS3). The movies (and TV shows) are actually coming from Netflix giving this company another distribution channel. Therefore, Sony offers its own Internet movie store available (movies for about $3-4) and in order to access the Netflix service a monthly subscription of $8.99 or more is needed. The actual implementation is not very elegant as it comes as a "DVD-by-mail". That is, one needs a special disk from Netflix (free of charge) and users need to pop it into their PS3 each time they would like to access the service. This situation should change once the PS3 software gets updated which will happen next year.

Anyway, it seems that the PS3 is becoming yet another STB-ish device... excellent!

First impressions from Xi'an, China

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:10:00 +0000

After having arrived in Xi'an, China on Saturday afternoon, my first experience was already at Beijing airport with a Chinese Red Bull can (see figure left) and I've to say that the taste is somewhat different to what is served back at home. The term "different" seems to be something which can be appropriately applied to whole China? Well, let's see what's coming next.

My hotel is very nice and (very) luxury - depending on what you're usually used to. However, although I've a room on the 15th floor (out of 18) I do not have a clear view of the city (see figure right). Thus, I wonder whether the Chinese language has any sign for respirable dust...

Another experience was my first dinner together with some colleagues from MPEG. We simple entered an arbitrary restaurant that looked nice from outside and ordered something by picture. Yes, "order by picture" which is similar to "query by example" where one also gets something similar to what is represented in the example picture (see figure below ;-)
Finally, the people here are very nice and friendly although sometimes communication turns out a major issue resulting in strange misunderstandings. For examples, yesterday evening we asked for cold drinks and just got ice cubes as we had our drinks already on the table, or trying to order fried rice as shown in the figure below, hmmm...
The fun will continue tonight, I assume ... so stay tuned!

An Important Step Towards UMA/UME

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:15:00 +0000

In my view such an API is an important step towards realizing the objectives behind universal multimedia access/experience after the beginning of standardization work around CC/PP & UAProf, MPEG-21 DIA, etc.

in Bezug auf: Device APIs Requirements (auf Google Sidewiki anzeigen)

SAMT 2009: Call for Participation

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:57:00 +0000

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SAMT 2009
4th International Conference on Semantic and Digital Media Technologies
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

2-4 December 2009
Graz, Austria

The 4th International Conference on Semantic and Digital Media
Technologies (SAMT 2009) targets at narrowing the large disparity
between the low-level descriptors that can be computed automatically
from multimedia content and the richness and subjectivity of semantics
in user queries and human interpretations of audiovisual media - The
Semantic Gap.

The preliminary program of SAMT 2009 can be found at http://www.samt2009.org/program
Next to the full and short papers of the main conference SAMT offers:

* Keynotes

- Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Yahoo! Research Barcelona

- Stefan Rüger, Open University

* Industry day with presentations about how semantic multimedia
technologies are put into practice

* Tutorials

- Web of Data in the Context of Multimedia
Bernhard Haslhofer, Bernhard Schandl, Andreas Langegger, Wolfgang
Halb and Tobias Buerger

- MPEG Metadata for Context-Aware Multimedia Applications
Christian Timmerer and Mathias Lux

- A Semantic Multimedia Web: Create, Annotate, Present and Share
your Media
Lynda Hardman and Raphaël Troncy

* Workshops

- Workshop on Semantic Multimedia Database Technologies http://semudate2009.fim.uni-passau.de/

- 3rd Workshop on Learning the Semantics of Audio Signals http://lsas2009.dke-research.de/

Registration is open at http://www.samt2009.org/registration - early
registration ends on Nov. 1.

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Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

3D Stereo Media | Festival de la technologie 3D Stéréo | 3D Stereo Technology Festival

Studienreise IBM Forschungszentrum Rüschlikon

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:23:00 +0000

Der Förderverein Technische Fakultät lädt zur Studienreise "IBM Forschungszentrum Rüschlikon" ein.

„Schauen Sie Nobelpreisträgern über die Schulter“
-- 04. bis 06. November 2009 --

PROGRAMM

Tag: Fahrt (Bus) von Klagenfurt über Salzburg – Innsbruck und Feldkirch nach Zürich. Bezug der Quartiere. Nächtigung.
Tag: Frühstück. Am Vormittag erleben Sie eine halbtägige Stadtbesichtigung in Zürich. Danach besichtigen Sie das IBM Forschungszentrum in Rüschlikon. Anschließendes Abendessen auf Einladung von IBM. Rückfahrt nach Zürich. Nächtigung.
Tag: Frühstück. Anschließend Rückreise nach Klagenfurt.

LEISTUNGEN

2x Nächtigung/Frühstück in einem Mittelklassehotel auf Basis Mehrbettzimmer, Dusche, WC
Reiseleitung Zürich für einen halben Tag
1x Abendessen am 5. November auf Einladung von IBM

KOSTEN

240,-- Euro pro Person
Vereinsmitglieder: 170,-- Euro pro Person
Einzelzimmerzuschlag 50,-- Euro

Die ÖH bzw. die einzelnen Studienvertretungen werden sich beteiligen und TeilnehmerInnen
erhalten nach Vorlage der Rechnung einen ÖH-Zuschuss refundiert.

ANMELDUNG
Die Anmeldung erfolgt per E-Mail an Frau Klothilde Puschl: Klothilde.Puschl@uni-klu.ac.at

Visual Communications and Image Processing 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:11:00 +0000

Call for Papers: Visual Communications and Image Processing 2010
11-14 July 2010, Huang Shan, China
Web: http://vcip2010.ustc.edu.cn
Email: vcip2010@ustc.edu.cn
Hosted by: University of Science and Technology of China
Co-hosted by: Microsoft Research Asia

Visual communication has become an important engineering area that attracts interdisciplinary research interest and has lead to significant developments in technology and science. This conference is designed as a forum for presenting important research results. Original and unpublished material of novel techniques and new developments are solicited on the following and related topics:

1. Image and Video Coding
1.1. image/video coding algorithms
1.2. perceptual image/video coding
1.3. content-based coding
1.4. error-resilient image/video coding
1.5. scalable/layered coding
1.6. distributed/multi-view coding
2. Visual Communication Techniques
2.1. video transmission techniques
2.2. QoS issue
2.3. wireless video
2.4. Internet video
2.5. interactive/broadband video
3. Image and Video Analysis
3.1. image analysis
3.2. image sequence analysis
3.3. web-based image and video analysis
3.4. object segmentation and tracking
3.5. statistical models
4. Image and Video Processing
4.1. multi-resolution processing
4.2. multi-modal media processing
4.3. web-based image and video processing
4.4. restoration, enhancement, and noise reduction
4.5. sparse-based processing
4.6. adaptation/transcoding
5. Image and Video Synthesis and Rendering
5.1. stereo, multiview, and 3D (virtual reality)
5.2. synthetic image/video representations
5.3. graphics techniques in image/video representations
5.4. audio/video integration
5.5. image/video conversion
6. Implementation and Applications
6.1. VLSI implementation
6.2. system architecture
6.3. soft radio technologies
6.4. video and home networking
6.5. video and e-commerce/m-commerce

For paper submission, please go to VCIP’2010 Web, http://vcip2010.ustc.edu.cn/submission.htm and submit up to 3000 words or four pages papers in PDF format by Dec. 6, 2009.

Proposal for Tutorials, Special Sessions, Panels and Exhibitions

VCIP’2010 will include a number of special sessions. Proposals for special sessions should be made according to the guidelines in the VCIP’2010 Call for Special Sessions (http://vcip2010.ustc.edu.cn/special_sessions.htm) and submitted by Nov. 7, 2009. All papers for special sessions are submitted as regular papers for review by Dec. 6. 2009.
Tutorials will be held on July 11, 2010. Proposals for tutorials should include a title, an outline of the tutorial and its motivation, contact and bio information for the presenter(s), and a short description of the material to be covered. Proposals for Panel sessions should include the title and panel list. Proposals for tutorials and panels should be submitted by Jan. 25, 2010.
VCIP’2010 will also feature a demo session. Proposals of technical demonstrations should be made according to the guidelines in VCIP’2010 Call for Demos (http://vcip2010.ustc.edu.cn/demos.htm) and submitted by Jan. 25, 2010.

Important Deadlines:

Proposals for Special Sessions Due Date: Nov. 7, 2009
Regular and Special Session papers Submission (3000 words): Due Date: Dec. 6, 2009
Proposals for Tutorials, Panels and Exhibitions: Due Date: Jan. 25, 2010
Author notification: Due Date: Jan. 31, 2010
Final manuscript (8-10 pages) and summary (200 words): Due Date: Feb. 21, 2010

Best Paper Award
Two awards will be given for the best papers. A photocopy of the researcher's most current diploma and a letter from the researcher requesting that his/her paper be considered must be submitted with the final manuscript.

WIAMIS 2010 - Preliminary Program available!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:20:00 +0000

Wow, they've already keynotes confirmed by Alberto del Bimbo (Semantic annotation of video events) and David Taubman (Efficient Interactive Access to Large Volume Media). Also, Marco Tagliasacchi will give a tutorial about "Compressive Sensing: basic principles and applications in image and video processing". Sounds interesting and Lago di Garda is a beautiful place, although as mountain biker I'd prefer the northern part of the lake ;-)

in reference to: Wiamis 2010 (view on Google Sidewiki)

WIAMIS 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:59:00 +0000

The International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services (WIAMIS) is one of the main international forum for the presentation and discussion of the latest technological advances in interactive multimedia services. The objective of the workshop is to bring together researchers and developers from academia and industry working in all areas of image, video and audio applications, with a special focus on analysis.

After Louvain (1997), Berlin (1999), Tampere (2001), London (2003), Lisboa (2004), Montreux (2005), Incheon (2006), Santorini (2007), Klagenfurt (2008) and London (2009), WIAMIS 2010 will be held in Desenzano del Garda, Italy.

Download the call for paper

Download the Special Session call for paper

!!! NEW - Download the preliminary program - NEW !!!

For further details please contact us at wiamis2010@ing.unibs.it

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Multimedia content analysis and understanding
Content-based browsing, indexing and retrieval of images, video and audio
Content-based copy detection
Emotional based content classification and organization
2D/3D feature extraction
Advanced descriptors and similarity metrics for audio and video
Relevance feedback and learning systems
Segmentation of objects in 2D/3D image sequences
Motion analysis and tracking
Video analysis and event recognition
Analysis for coding efficiency and increased error resilience
Analysis and tools for content adaptation
Multimedia content adaptation tools, transcoding and transmoding
Content summarization and personalization strategies
End-to-end quality of service support for Universal Multimedia Access
Semantic mapping and ontologies
Multimedia analysis for new and emerging applications
Multimedia analysis hardware and middleware
Semantic web and social networks
Advanced interfaces for content analysis and relevance feedback
Applications

Preliminary schedule

Proposal of Special Sessions: October 30, 2009
Notification of a Conditional acceptance of SS proposal: 10 Nov. 2009
Paper Submission: November 20, 2009
SS paper submission: November 30, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: January 15, 2010
Camera Ready Paper: February 15, 2010

Computing Now

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:15:00 +0000

Computing Now aggregates new print and online content from the IEEE Computer Society's 13 peer-reviewed magazines into one website. Each month, we highlight cross-magazine coverage of hot topics such as robotics, green computing, and social networking.

Read more on this in the "About CN" Section.

And Computing Now is also available via Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

in reference to: Computing Now | IEEE Computer Society Magazines Home (view on Google Sidewiki)

MPEG Multimedia Standards Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:23:00 +0000

Purpose

Mutlimedia technologies have played an essential role in the deployment of many consumer and professional products and services around the world. Multimedia technologies have entered the common people’s life now. All indications show that, as in the past, they will continue to play an important role in the deployment of future products and services. This workshop will present some of the new multimedia technologies and their achievements and their applications, especially in audio, video standardizations and technologies as defined and studied by ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 WG11, ITU-T SG16 Q.6 and AVS Working Group of Ministry of Information Industry of China.

Host & Date & Venue

Workshop on Multimedia New Technologies and Applications is hosted by Xidian University, Xi'an, China.
Workshop will be held on Saturday 31 Oct. 2009 (a full-day meeting).
Conference room is in Library of Xidian University.
Open to all MPEG and JPEG members.

Organization Committee

Chairman

Xin Wang
University of Southern California, USA

Members

Touradj Ebrahimi
EPFL, Switzerland
Wen Gao
Peking University, China
Tiejun Huang
Peking University, China
Joern Ostermann
Leibniz Universtaet Hannover, Germany
Guangming Shi
XianDian University, China
Huifang Sun
MERL Technology Lab, USA
Feng Wu
Microsoft, China

Program (Final)

Time	Topic	Speaker	Title
09:30	Welcome
09:40	Video	Lu Yu
10:10	3DV	Karsten Mueller	3D Video Formats and Coding Standards
10:40	MPEG-U	JAEYEON SONG	Widget Technologies in the Convergence Environment
11:10	Coffee break
11:20	RVC	Euee S. Jang	Introduction to MPEG Reconfigurable Video Coding
11:50	Audio	Minjie Xie	MPEG Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC)
12:20	BIF, LASeR	YoungKwon Lim	Rich Media standards in MPEG
12:50	Lunch

14:00	AVS	Wen Gao
14:30	MPEG-7	Miroslaw Bober
15:00	MAF	KyuHeon Kim
15:30	Coffee break
15:45	MPEG-21	Xin Wang	MPEG-21: Multimedia Framework Standards
16:15	MPEG-V	Sanghyun Joo	Introduction to MPEG-V activities
16:45	MXM	Christian Timmerer	MPEG-M: MPEG Extensible Middleware - Accelerating Media Business Developments
17:15	Q&A Session	Speakers, Audience
18:00	Adjourn

iTunesLP: The "first" (MPEG-21) Digital Item?

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:20:00 +0000

Apple recently released iTunesLP with which "the visual experience of the record album returns". Today, I've purchased the first iTunesLP (btw. 1st iTunes music thing ever!) to see what's behind this 'new format' and whether it can be considered as a digital item (as defined by MPEG-21). The album in question is "The Doors: 40th Anniversary Mixes" and comes with the regular media files which are placed in the regular iTunes directory structure. However, it also comes with a .itlp 'file' - at least this is what Mac OS X finder shows (cf. figure below).
However, what's behind is a simple directory structure comprising an index.html linking to a set of CSS files (css) and JavaScript files (controllers and src). Furthermore, the directory structure includes links to fonts, images, and videos required for the presentation of the LP and an Apple .plist file. The views directory provides something like the sub-pages from an album's booklet.
That is, the iTunesLP is basically a Web site (i.e., HTML+CSS+JavaScript) and iTunes becomes a ordinary Web browser? Hmm, finally I tried to transfer the iTunesLP to the iPhone but it seems that the iPhone cannot play the album in the same way iTunes does.

On the other hand, is it possible to realize the functionality provided by iTunesLP with MPEG-21 tools? I would say "Yes, it can"! In particular, the relationship between the various assets (text, images, videos, etc.) can be described using Digital Item Declaration and Digital Item Identification is used to identify the whole album and individual tracks. The interaction can be achieved by Digital Item Processing which enables the inclusion of ECMAScript (JavaScript) within a Digital Item. Finally, the File Format provides means to package the digital item into a single file - based on the ISO base media file format and compatible to .mp4 - enabling easy transaction among users within the whole value network.

So, is the iTunesLP a digital item? - Yes! Is the iTunesLP compatible with an MPEG-21 Digital Item - No (it is not compliant to MPEG-21) / Yes (it can be realized using MPEG-21). Additionally, MPEG-21 provides means to package a Digital Item into a single file and it is interoperable.

Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT): Ad-hoc Group Meeting in Milan, Sep 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:07:00 +0000

Milan has not only the 'Duomo' (see picture below) but was also the host for the AhG meeting (Sep 10-11) on Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT), one of MPEGs newest exploration activity. The output is publicly available and provides the following documents:

Please note that these documents have not been approved by MPEG yet. However, these documents form the basis for a Call for Proposals (CfP) hopefully issued during MPEG's next meeting in Xian.

MobiMedia & EUMOB 2009 Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:10:00 +0000

Last week I've been at MobiMedia and EUMOB 2009. The program started with a tutorial from Fernando Pereira about "Mobile Video Coding" starting from good old object-based coding introduced in MPEG-4. The concept of objects in video is there (i.e., production, etc.) but not yet in our house. He still believes in the concept of object-based video coding! In fact, flexible macroblock ordering (FMO) introduced in Advanced Video Coding (AVC) can be used to simulate object-based coding by grouping slices and prioritize them separately.

One keynote was given by Bernd Girod about Mobile Image Matching – Towards Mobile Augmented Reality. The concept is as follows: (1) Take photo on mobile device, (2) extract certain features, (3) transmit feature to server, (4) do processing on server (e.g., search for associated information about what is on the picture), and (5) send reply to device. This safes bandwidth as the picture does not have to be uploaded to the server, only the feature descriptor which is considerably smaller than the picture itself. And, it works - great ... overall interesting work and lot of people were involved in this project (>10).

Another keynote given by Chang Wen Chen was about "Mobile and Networked Video: A Challenging New Era". He introduced True Ubiquitous Video which is Mobile to Mobile that requires low complexity both at the encoder and decoder. Current coding schemes such as (Advanced Video Coding) AVC and Distributed Video Coding (DVC) require either high complexity at the encoder or decoder which fits well with the targeted application area. He proposes some kind of transcoding between DVC and AVC streams within the network. However, this is at a very early stage and it is not sure whether it leads to any success. Furthermore, he calls for semantic adaptation with more intelligence but I'm not sure what this exactly means ;-)

Finally, EUMOB had some nice presentations from various EC-funded projects such as FUTON, ADAMANTIUM, InterMedia, and OPTIMIX.

MMNS2009: Call for Participation - Venice Oct 26-27

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:16:00 +0000

MMNS 2009:
12th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on
Management of Multimedia and Mobile Networks and Services

http://www.manweek.org/2009/mmns

(part of MANWEEK 2009, October 26-30)
Telecom Italia Future Centre, Venice, Italy
***************************************************************************

Please note that early registration is possible till September 15.
After that registration costs increase with 50 Euro.
In addition, authors MUST register before September 15.
Registration is possible via the Manweek Web site: http://www.manweek.org/2009/
where you can find a list of possible hotels and travel information.

By continuing the long history of success of IFIP/IEEE MMNS,
the 12th edition of MMNS is expected to be even
more interesting, valuable, and fruitful for its participants.

The conference will be organized over two days (October 26 and 27),
associated with the other relevant events included in MANWEEK,
(Manweek Social event on Wed Oct 28) and
will bring together researchers from across the world to present and
discuss the latest in academic/industrial results,
also focused on the year's theme of managing wired-wireless multimedia
networks and services.

MMNS'09 is honored to host 2 excellent keynote speeches:
- jointly with MACE: Prof. Alva Couch (Tufts University)
- jointly with DSOM, MACE and NGNM: tba

In addition, the conference program will consist of 13 high-quality full
papers, selected after a very rigorous review process
(29.7% acceptance ratio), from 11 different countries.
These will be presented in 4 technical sessions, with comfortable space
for questions from the audience.

- Session A: "Multimedia Networks and Systems Management"
1) "Design of an Online Charging System to Support IMS-based Inter-
Domain Composite Services"
2) "Telecom Network and Service Management: An Operator Survey"
3) "On-Demand Multicast Streaming Using Collaborative Prefix Caching"

- Session B: "Multimedia Quality"
4) "Quality Adaptation Mechanisms for Peer-to-Peer Video Streaming"
5) "Modeling of a QoS Matching and Optimization Function for
Multimedia Services in the NGN"
6) "iBE: A Novel Bandwidth Estimation Algorithm for Multimedia
Services over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks"
7) "A Cost Function for QoS-Aware Routing in Multi-tier Wireless
Multimedia Sensor Networks"

- Session C: "VoIP and Vocal Applications"
8) "QoE Assessment of VoIP in Next Generation Networks"
9) "NIDA: A Parametric Vocal Quality Assessment Algorithm over
Transient Connections"
10) "Voice2Web: Architecture for Managing Voice-Application Access to
Web Resources"

- Session D: "Peer-to-Peer Multimedia Networks"
11) "A Robust Algorithm for the Membership Management of Super-peer
Overlay"
12) "An Evaluation Criterion for Adaptive Neighbor Selection in
Heterogeneous Peer-to-Peer Networks"
13) "Improving Performance of ALM Systems with Bayesian Estimation of
Peers Dynamics"

The program will also include a Short Paper Session with 5 high-
quality papers,
presented together in a Poster Session
(handled jointly with MACE).
1) "Quality of Service for Multicasting in Content Addressable Networks"
2) "A General Architecture for Enabling and End User Services in IMS"
3) "Data Aggregation Scheme for a Multi-Application WSN"
4) "Context-aware IPTV"
5) "COOCHING: Cooperative Prefetching Strategy for P2P Video-on-Demand
System"

Additional information about the final technical program is available
at the conference Web site:
http://www.manweek.org/2009/mmns/mmns.php

MMNS'09 will be held at the fascinating Telecom Italia Future Centre,
in the worldwide known and magnificent Venice. The conference is
sponsored
by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)
Working Group 6.6 on
Management of Networks and Distributed Systems, with technical co-
sponsorship by the
IEEE Communications Society and specifically the Technical Committee
on Network
Operations and Management (CNOM).

WWW2010: Call for Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:08:00 +0000

The Call for Papers (CfP) for the WWW conference 2010 is available with the following important dates:

2009/10/10	.. Workshop proposals due
2009/10/26	.. Abstracts for papers and demos due
2009/11/02	.. Papers and demos due
2009/11/15	.. Tutorial proposals due
2010/01/21	.. Author notifications out
2010/02/11	.. Camera ready papers due
2010/04/26	.. Conference begins

Areas and Topics of Interest
A submission to any of the tracks may belong to one or perhaps a few of the following areas (see the list of topics for a more detailed description):

Search: Web indexing, searching, query processing, scoring, ranking, query log analysis.
Data Mining and Machine Learning: Deriving actionable insight from Web information sources: query logs, Web graph, social networks, click trails, text documents, etc.
Bridging Structured and Unstructured Data: Information extraction and integration, and next-generation searching and querying techniques that exploits these.
Social Networks: Models, algorithms, systems and issues around social networks and collaborative environments.
Semantic Web: Metadata representation and standards, ontologies, reasoning and logic, agents.
Security and Privacy: Theory and practice of data and system security, privacy, anonymization and cloaking, information contract codification, protocols.
Internet Monetization: Markets, auctions, games, pricing, advertising, and other Web-specific economic activities.
Software Architecture and Infrastructure: Processes, principles, methods, models, and architectures supporting the design and development of Web applications.
Performance, Scalability and Availability: System engineering issues for traditional and emerging Web applications.
Networking and Mobility: Communication protocols, robustness, security, mobile applications, content distribution.
Users Interfaces and Rich Interaction: Designing, streamlining and evaluating the interaction boundaries between users and the system, studies in cognitive load and its mitigation, multiparty interaction.
Rich Media: Web-scale management of rich media such as video, images, audio, and music; interactive media and collaboration.

Guidelines for Demos, Tutorials and Workshops
Demonstration Proposals

Demonstration proposals must adhere to the conference’s submission policies. They must be submitted electronically using the conference management tool, and in camera-ready format adhering to the formatting guidelines. They will appear in the conference proceedings. Demonstration proposals must be submitted by November 2, 2009 (9:000pm PDT). Proposals should be focused on new Web technology, advances in applying Web technology, or innovative use of Web-based techniques. Proposals must be submitted in camera-ready format and are limited to 4 pages. They should describe the demonstrated system, indicate what is going to be demonstrated, and state the significance of the contribution to database technology or applications. Demonstration proposals must not be published or under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Tutorial Proposals

Tutorial proposals must clearly identify the intended audience and its assumed background. Proposals must be no more than 5 pages and must provide a sense of both the scope of the tutorial and depth within the scope. The intended length of the tutorial (full day or half day) should also be indicated, together with justification that a high-quality presentation will be achieved within the chosen time period and the indication of the main learning outcomes. Proposals should also include contact information (name, email, address, telephone number, and FAX number) and a brief bio of the presenters. If the proposed tutorial has been given previously, the proposal should include where the tutorial has been given and how it will be modified for WWW 2010.

Proposals must be submitted electronically by November 15th, 2009 (9:00pm PDT). Tutorial presentations will be published and made available to WWW participants.

Workshop Proposals

WWW 2010 will again feature a number of co-located workshops. A workshop proposal should be no more than 5 pages and should include the workshop title, technical description of the the topic and issues, justification, chairs, potential program committee members, duration and history (if any) of the workshop. If the proposal is for a recurring workshop, information about attendance, number of submissions and accepted papers must be included in the proposal. Proposals should be submitted by October 10th, 2009 (9:00pm PDT).

WWW 2010 offers the usual serviced workshops, where registration, catering, room allocation and audio/visual will be organized by the conference organizers. The serviced workshops will take place on Monday and Tuesday, before the conference. The workshops will be hosted at the conference venue. Workshop proposals may have any duration from half-a-day to 1 day. Please indicate your preference for a date. Note that proposals must be unconditional concerning scheduling. It is very likely that some workshops will not get their preferred date.

Program of the 3rd European Symposium on Mobile Media Delivery (EUMOB) 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:30:00 +0000

The program for the 3rd European Symposium on Mobile Media Delivery (EUMOB) 2009, co-located with MobiMedia 2009, is available here (PDF).

EUMOB will be held on Wednesday, 9th of September after the keynote given by Dr. Martin Hahn, EU Commission and Dr. Bart van Caenegem, EU Commission

The updated, detailed program* of EUMOB is as follows:

12:00-12:20: Opening
12:20-12:40: Optimisation of Multimedia over wireless IP links via X-layer design: an end-to-end transmission chain simulator by Catherine Lamy-Bergot (THALES Communications), Gábor Jeney (BME Budapest University of Technology and Economics), Gábor Feher (BME Budapest University of Technology and Economics), Gianmarco Panza (Cefriel), Matteo Mazzotti (CNIT), Esa Piri (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Tiia Sutinen (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Janne Vehkaperä (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Roberta Fracchia (THALES Communications), Peter Amon (Siemens Corporate Technology)
12:40-13:00: Distributed video coding with decoder-driven skip by Jurgen Slowack (Ghent University - IBBT), Jozef Skorupa (Ghent University - IBBT), Stefaan Mys (Ghent University - IBBT), Peter Lambert (Ghent University - IBBT), Christos Grecos (University of the West of Scotland), Rik Van de Walle (Ghent University - IBBT)

13:00 - 14:00: Lunch break

14:00-14:20: Priority-based Transmission Scheduling for Delivery of Scalable Video Coding over Mobile Channels by Thomas Wiegand (Fraunhofer HHI and Technische Universität Berlin), Yago Sanchez de la Fuente (Fraunhofer HHI), Cornelius Hellge (Technische Universität Berlin), Thomas Schierl (Fraunhofer HHI)
14:20-14:40: Adapted IPTV Service within novel IMS Architecture by Daniel Negru (CNRS-LaBRI, University of Bordeaux), Julien Arnaud (CNRS-LaBRI University of Bordeaux), Julien Pauty (Viotech Communications), Mamadou Sidibe (Viotech Communications), Harilaos Koumaras (NCSR Demokritos, Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications)
14:40-15:00: Personalized adaptation and presentation of annotated videos for mobile applications by Sarah De Bruyne (Ghent University - IBBT - MMLab), Jan De Cock (Ghent University - IBBT - MMLab), Rik Van de Walle (Ghent University - IBBT - MMLab), Peter Hosten (RWTH Aachen University), Mark Asbach (RWTH Aachen University), Mathias Wien (RWTH Aachen University), Cyril Concolato (TELECOM ParisTech)
15:00-15:20: Evaluation of an Information Service for enhanced Multiaccess Media Delivery by Jukka Makela (Technical research centre of Finland), Markus Luoto (Technical research centre of Finland), Tiia Sutinen (Technical research centre of Finland), Kostas Pentikousis (Technical research centre of Finland)

15:20-15:40: Coffee break (tentative)

15:40-16:00: Transformation Techniques for Future Video Coding by Stijn Notebaert (Ghent University -- IBBT), Kenneth Vermeirsch (Ghent University -- IBBT), Jan De Cock (Ghent University -- IBBT), Rik Van de Walle (Ghent University -- IBBT), Peter Lambert (Ghent University -- IBBT)
16:00- 16:20: Unequal loss protection and multiple description coding: a performance comparison by Tammam Tillo (Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering - Xi‘an Jiaotong-Liverpool University), Enrico Baccaglini (Dipartimento di Elettronica - Politecnico di Torino), Gabriella Olmo (Affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica - Politecnico di Torino)
16:20-16:40: An Experimental Approach of Video Quality Level Dependence on Video Content Dynamics by Daniel Negru (CNRS-LaBRI, University of Bordeaux), Harilaos Koumaras (Business College of Athens, Computer Science Department), Julien Arnaud (CNRS-LaBRI, University of Bordeaux), Anastasios Kourtis (NCSR Demokritos Inst. of Informatics and Telecom)
16:40-17:00: Enhanced vertical handover based on 802.21 framework for real-time video streaming by Ilias Politis (University of Patras), Michail Tsagaropoulos (University of Patras), Tasos Dagiuklas (TEI of Messolonghi), Stavros Kotsopoulos (University of Patras)

* ... the exact time slots are subject to changes.

STreaming Day 2009: Genova, 21 September 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:26:00 +0000

http://www.stday09.dibe.unige.it/technical.html

09:30 Opening

Parallel SESSION I: Implementations (chairman: M. Raggio)

09:45 "H264 Encoder SIMD implementation on xSTream architecture"
Massimo Bariani, Paolo Lambruschini, Marco Raggio
(Università degli Studi di Genova)

10:15 "On-chip Communication Infrastructures for the Integration of Video IP cores in a Multi Processor System-on-Chip"
Sergio Saponara, Luca Fanucci, Michele Casula, Marcello Coppola
(Università di Pisa/ STM)

10:45 "An Advanced Error Concealment Framework for H.264/AVC Video Sequences"
Ennio Gambi, Giorgio Rascioni, Susanna Spinsante
(Università Politecnica delle Marche)

11:15 Coffee break

11:30 "A cloud-based video game streaming system for pervasive gaming"
Audrius Jurgelionis, Francesco Bellotti, Alessandro De Gloria, Peter Eisert, Alex Shani
(Università degli Studi di Genova)

12:00 "Scalable multiple description coding of video sequences"
Lorenzo Favalli, Marco Folli
(Università degli Studi di Pavia)

Parallel SESSION II: Video Transport Techniques (chairman: F. Rovati)

09:45 "On the fly Gaussian Elimination decoding for LT codes"
Valerio Bioglio, Marco Grangetto, Rossano Gaeta, Matteo Sereno
(Università di Torino)

10:15 "Video Unequal Error Protection with Network Coding"
Nikos Thomos, Jacob Chakareski, Pascal Frossard
(EPFL)

10:45 "A Layered Piece-Picking Algorithm for Peer-to-Peer networks"
Michael Eberhard, Christian Timmerer, Hermann Hellwagner
(Alpen-Adria-Universität, Klagenfurt)

11:15 Coffee break

11:30 "Evaluation of Network Coding Procedures in P2P networks"
Riccardo Bernardini, Roberto Cesco Fabbro, Roberto Rinaldo
(Università di Udine)

12:00 "SEACAST: A protocol for Peer-to-Peer Video Streaming Supporting Multiple Description Coding"
Simone Zezza, Enrico Magli, Gabriella Olmo, Marco Grangetto
(Politecnico di Torino/ Università di Torino)

12:30 "Priority-based Transmission of Scalable Video Coding"
Yago Sanchez de la Fuente, Cornelius Hellge,Karsten Grüneberg, Thomas Schierl
(Fraunhofer HHI)

13:00 Lunch

SESSION III: Video Coding Techniques (chairman: D. Alfonso)

14:15 "Combined use of ToF sensors and standard cameras for 3D video acquisition"
Carlo Dal Mutto, Valeria Garro, Pietro Zanuttigh, Guido M. Cortelazzo
(Università di Padova)

14:45 "Latency Analysis for Current Multiview Video Compression"
Narciso Garcia, Pablo Carballeira, Juan Casal
(Universidad Politecnica de Madrid)

15:15 "Video Communication: Future Applications Challenges and Technical Solutions"
Thomas Wiegand
(Fraunhofer HHI / TU Berlin)

15:45 Coffee break

16:00 "Distortion Estimate for Motion-Adaptive Temporal Transforms with Noise"
Fabio Verdicchio, Yiannis Andreopoulos
(University College London)

16:30 "A semianalytical model for the quality vs. rate tradeoff in Medium Grain Scalable H.264 coders"
Michele Cesari, Lorenzo Favalli, Marco Folli
(Università di Pavia)

17:00 Panel Discussion and Best Presentation Award

W3C Relaunches Multimodal Interaction Working Group

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:45:00 +0000

W3C is pleased to announce the relaunch of the Multimodal Interaction Working Group to develop technology that enables users to use their preferred modes of interaction with the Web. Deborah Dahl (Invited Expert) chairs the group which is chartered to develop open standards to adapt to device, user and environmental conditions, and to allow multiple modes of Web interaction including GUI, speech, vision, pen, gestures, haptic interfaces, sensor data, etc. W3C Members may use this form to join the Working Group. Read about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

Very interesting as this WG aims bringing the Emotion Markup Language to Candidate Recommendation. So far the Elements of an EmotionML 1.0 have been identified as a W3C Incubator Group Report. Interestingly, ISO/IEC MPEG also has emotions within the scope of its MPEG-V work item. I wonder whether both groups could benefit from each other, the one way or the other ... let me know what is your opinion.

NEM Summit - Towards Future Media Internet - Last chance to exhibit

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Next week is the last chance to exhibit at the upcoming 2009 NEM Summit.

Don't miss the opportunity to take advantage of one of the major event in the ICT field in Europe, featuring more than 50 exhibitors including:

the European Commission
12 commercial exhibitors (BCE, Thomson, Orange, Intel, INRIA, etc.)
18 European projects
20+ exhibitors from the Images & Réseaux cluster

Full details and exhibitors list can be found at http://www.nem-summit.eu. Contact Florent Genoux as soon as possible to secure your booth, and make sure to register before the end of the next week; deadline for early bird registration fees.

Ausschreibung einer freien Stelle an der Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

noreply@blogger.com (Christian Timmerer) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:32:00 +0000

Die Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt schreibt gem. §§ 107 Abs. 1 i.V.m. 128 Universi-tätsgesetz 2002 folgende Stelle zur Besetzung aus:

EDV-Technikerin/EDV-Techniker

am Institut für Informationstechnologie, Forschungsgruppe Multimediakommunikation, Fakultät für Technische Wissenschaften, im Beschäftigungsausmaß von 50% (Basis nach KV: IIIa, vormals v2/2). Voraussichtlicher Beginn des Angestelltenverhältnisses ist der 15. September 2009.

Aufgabenbereich:

Technische Betreuung der Arbeitsplatz- und Ausbildungsrechner, Peripherie, Netzwerke sowie System- und Anwendungssoftware des Instituts für Informationstechnologie.
Technische Betreuung der speziellen, für Lehre und Forschung des Instituts für Informationstechnologie benötigten DV-Geräte, Systeme, Netzwerke und Software, z. B. Systeme und Werkzeuge für die Multimedia-Kommunikation, für mobile Multime-dia-Systeme, spezielle Netzwerke.
Programmieraufgaben, die die Lehrtätigkeit und Forschungsprojekte des Instituts unterstützen oder für die Erfüllung der o. g. Aufgaben erforderlich sind.

Voraussetzungen für die Einstellung:

Matura, (wenn möglich unter Einschluss technischer Fächer oder mit vergleichbaren Zusatzausbildungen), oder erfolgreich abgelegte, facheinschlägige Studienberechtigungsprüfung.
Kenntnisse und nach Möglichkeit praktische Erfahrung mit den Betriebssystemen Unix/Linux und Windows sowie in Hardware- und Netzwerktechnik.
Bereitschaft zur Weiterbildung in Hardware- und Software-Bereichen.

Erwünscht sind:

Programmierung in einer systemnahen höheren Programmiersprache, z.B. C oder C++.
Kenntnisse in Web-Technologien und Web-Programmierung, z.B. HTML, PHP.
Einschlägige Berufserfahrung.

Die Universität strebt eine Erhöhung des Frauenanteils beim technischen Personal an und fordert daher qualifizierte Frauen zur Bewerbung auf. Frauen werden bei gleicher Qualifikation vorrangig aufgenommen.

Menschen mit Behinderungen oder chronischen Erkrankungen, die die geforderten Qualifikationskriterien erfüllen, werden ausdrücklich zur Bewerbung aufgefordert.

Bewerbungen sind mit den üblichen Unterlagen bis spätestens 10. September 2009 unter der Kennung 596/09 an die Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Dienstleis-tungseinrichtung Personal / Fachabteilung Personalentwicklung, Universitätsstraße 65-67, 9020 Klagenfurt, zu richten.

Es besteht kein Anspruch auf Abgeltung von entstandenen Reise- und Aufenthaltskosten, die aus Anlass des Aufnahmeverfahrens entstehen.

Weitere Informationen erteilt:
Univ.-Prof. DI Dr. Hermann Hellwagner, Tel.: +43 (0)463/2700-3612
E-Mail: hermann.hellwagner@itec.uni-klu.ac.at
Homepage: www.uni-klu.ac.at/tewi/inf/itec/mmc