KEYWORDS: Video, Video processing, Cameras, Video acceleration, Telecommunications, 3D displays, Video coding, Holography, Virtual reality, Video compression
Recent advancements in volumetric displays have opened doors to immersive, glass-free holographic experiences in our everyday environments. This paper introduces Holoportal, a real-time, low-latency system that captures, processes, and displays 3D video of two physically separated individuals as if they are conversing face-to-face in the same location. The evolution of work in multi-view immersive video communication from a Space-Time-Flow (STF) media technology to real time Holoportal communication is also discussed. Multiple cameras at each location capture subjects from various angles, with wireless synchronization for precise video-frame alignment. Through this technology we envision a future where any living space can transform into a Holoportal with a wireless network of cameras placed on various objects, including TVs, speakers, and refrigerators.
In this paper, several coding tools are evaluated on top of the HEVC version 1. Among them there are straightforward extension of HEVC coding tools (such as Coding Unit size enlarging, fine granularity of Intra prediction angles) and algorithms that have been studied during HEVC development (such as secondary transform, multi-hypothesis CABAC, multi-parameter Intra prediction, bidirectional optical flow). Most of them improve performance of Intra coding. Minor adjustment to the final version of HEVC standard was done for efficient harmonization of the proposed coding tools with HEVC. Performance improvement observed from investigated tools is up to 7,1%, 9,9%, 4,5% and 5,7% in all-intra, random access, low-delay B and low-delay P test scenario (using HEVC common test conditions).
HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) is the next-generation video coding standard being jointly developed by the
ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG JCT-VC team. In addition to the high coding efficiency, which is expected to provide
50% more bit-rate reduction when compared to H.264/AVC, HEVC has built-in parallel processing tools to address bitrate, pixel-rate and motion estimation (ME) throughput requirements. This paper describes how CABAC, which is also used in H.264/AVC, has been redesigned for improved throughput, and how parallel merge/skip and tiles, which are new tools introduced for HEVC, enable high-throughput processing. CABAC has data dependencies which make it difficult to parallelize and thus limit its throughput. The prediction error/residual, represented as quantized transform coefficients, accounts for the majority of the CABAC workload. Various improvements have been made to the context selection and scans in transform coefficient coding that enable CABAC in HEVC to potentially achieve higher throughput and increased coding gains relative to H.264/AVC. The merge/skip mode is a coding efficiency enhancement tool in HEVC; the parallel merge/skip breaks dependency between the regular and merge/skip ME, which provides flexibility for high throughput and high efficiency HEVC encoder designs. For ultra high definition (UHD) video, such as 4kx2k and 8kx4k resolutions, low-latency and real-time processing may be beyond the capability of a single core codec. Tiles are an effective tool which enables pixel-rate balancing among the cores to achieve parallel processing with a throughput scalable implementation of multi-core UHD video codec. With the evenly divided tiles, a multi-core video codec can be realized by simply replicating single core codec and adding a tile boundary processing core on top of that. These tools illustrate that accounting for implementation cost when designing video coding algorithms can enable higher processing speed and reduce implementation cost, while still delivering high coding efficiency in the next generation video coding standard.
In the H.264/AVC video coding standard, the mode decision component involves a large amount of
computation. This paper presents a fast or computationally efficient mode prediction and selection
approach which has the following attributes: (a) both the spatial and temporal information are used to
achieve early termination using adaptive thresholds, (b) inclusion of a modulator capable of trading off
computational efficiency and accuracy, (c) a homogenous region detection procedure for 8×8 blocks based
on adaptive thresholds. The developed approach consists of three main steps: (1) mode prediction, (2) early
termination based on adaptive thresholds, and (3) refinement by checking all the modes. In addition, in
order to avoid sub-partitions into smaller block sizes for 8x8 blocks, texture information is utilized. It is
shown that the developed approach leads to a computationally efficient video coding implementation as
compared to the previous fast approaches. The results obtained on QCIF, CIF, and HD format video
sequences based on x264 are presented to demonstrate the computational efficiency of the developed
approach at the expense of acceptably low losses in video quality.
KEYWORDS: Video coding, Video, Standards development, Cameras, Digital cameras, Digital electronics, Digital filtering, Electronic filtering, Clocks, Motion estimation
Handheld battery-operated consumer electronics devices such as camera phones, digital still cameras, digital
camcorders, and personal media players have become very popular in recent years. Video codecs are extensively used in
these devices for video capture and/or playback. The annual shipment of such devices already exceeds a hundred
million units and is growing, which makes mobile battery-operated video device requirements very important to focus
in video coding research and development. This paper highlights the following unique set of requirements for video
coding for these applications: low power consumption, high video quality at low complexity, and low cost, and
motivates the need for a new video coding standard that enables better trade-offs of power consumption, complexity,
and coding efficiency to meet the challenging requirements of portable video devices. This paper also provides a brief
overview of some of the video coding technologies being presented in the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG)
standardization body for computational complexity reduction and for coding efficiency improvement in a future video
coding standard.
Conference Committee Involvement (1)
Real-Time Image Processing 2008
28 January 2008 | San Jose, California, United States
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