Thursday, November 19, 2009

WIAMIS-2010: Deadline Extension

DEADLINE EXTENSION: WIAMIS-2010
New Paper Submission Deadline: December 9, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11th Int. Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services
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April 12-14 2010
Desenzano del Garda - Italy

http://www.wiamis2010.org

Sponsored by:
- IEEE Signal Processing Society
- EURASIP
- ACM (pending)

--
An extended version of selected papers will be published in the
Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer
Science Series.

--
Keynote talks:
- Alberto del Bimbo, University of Florence
- David Taubman, The University of New South Wales

--
Tutorial talks:
- Marco Tagliasacchi, Politecnico di Milano
- Nicu Sebe, University of Trento

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Special Sessions:
- Semantic Digital Libraries for Cross-Discipline Retrieval
- Interactive Multimedia in Social Networks

Important Dates
---------------
Paper Submission: December 9, 2009
Special Sessions Paper Submission: December 9, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: January 15, 2010
Camera Ready Papers: February 15, 2010
--

The International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia
Interactive Services is one of the main international events 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 the areas of image, video and audio applications, with a
special focus on analysis. After a series of successful meetings
starting in 1997 in Louvain, WIAMIS 2010 will be held in Desenzano del
Garda, by the beautiful Garda Lake, close to Brescia, Italy.

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 anP 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.

Paper Submissions
---------------
Prospective authors are invited to submit papers in any of the areas
listed above. All papers must be written in English, and the length
should not exceed 4 pages in IEEE double column, single space format
(including figures and tables).

Instructions for preparing the manuscript (in Word and Latex formats)
are available at the following web page:
http://www.ing.unibs.it/wiamis2010/submission.php

Papers (in PDF format) should be submitted electronically via the web-
based Easy chair submission system:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wiamis2010

All accepted and registered papers will be published in the workshop
proceedings which will be indexed and distributed by the IEEExplore.
All submissions will be peer reviewed by at least three members of the
technical program committee.


General Chair
---------------
Riccardo Leonardi
University of Brescia, Italy

Program Chairs
---------------
Pierangelo Migliorati
University of Brescia, Italy
Andrea Cavallaro
Queen Mary, University of
London, UK

Special Session Chair
---------------
Jian Zhang
National ICT Australia, Australia

Sponsors and Industry Liaison
---------------
Alberto Signoroni
University of Brescia, Italy

US Liaison
---------------
Aggelos Katsaggelos
Northwestern University, USA

Asian Liaison
---------------
Hsueh Ming Hang
National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Publication Chair
---------------
Nicola Adami
University of Brescia, Italy

Local Arrangements Chair
---------------
Sergio Benini
University of Brescia, Italy

Technical Program Committee
---------------
Kiyoharu Aizawa, University of Tokyo, Japan
Yiannis Andreopoulos, University College, London, UK
Luigi Atzori, University of Cagliari, Italy
Yannis Avrithis, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Alberto del Bimbo, University of Florence, Italy
Susanne Boll, University of Vienna, Austria
Adrian Bors, The University of York, UK
Nikolaos Boulgouris, Kings College, University of London, UK
Nozha Boujemaa, INRIA, France
Selcuk Candan, Arizona State University, USA
Tsuhan Chen, Cornell University, USA
Touradj Ebrahimi, EPFL, Switzerland
Moncef Gabbouj, Tampere University of Technology, Finland
Allan Hanbury, Technical University of Vienna, Austria
Edwin Hancock, The University of York, UK
Alan Hanjalic, Delft University of Technology, NL
Hermann Hellwagner, Klagenfurt University, Austria
Emile Hendriks, Delft University of Technology, NL
Thomas Huang, University of Illinois, USA
Ebroul Izquierdo, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Joemon Jose, University of Glasgow, UK
Moon Gi Kang, Yonsei University, Korea
Aggelos Katsaggelos, Nothwestern University, USA
Yiannis Kompatsiaris, Informatics and Telematics Institute, Greece
Janusz Konrad, Boston University, USA
Inald Lagendjik, Delft University of Technology, NL
Zhu Li, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Rainer Lienhart, University of Ausgburg, Germany
Stephane Marchand-Maillet, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Dimitrios Makris, Kingston University of London, UK
Jose M. Martinez, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain
Benoit Macq, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Ferran Marques, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain
Majid Mirmehdi, University of Bristol, UK
Sanjit Mitra, University of Southern California, USA
Rafael Molina, University of Granada, Spain
Marta Mrak, University of Surrey, UK
Milind Naphade, IBM T. J. Watson Research, USA
Noel O'Connor, Dublin City University, Ireland
Antonio Ortega, University of Southern California, USA
Maja Pantic, Imperial College, UK / University of Twente, NL
Ioannis Patras, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Nikos Paragios, Ecole Central de Paris, France
Fernando Pereira, IST, Portugal
Andrea Prati, University of Modena, Italy
Philippe Salembier, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain
Shin'ichi Satoh, NII, Japan
Nicu Sebe, University of Amsterdam, NL / University of Trento, Italy
Mihaela van der Schaar, University of California, USA
Thomas Sikora, Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Qi Tian, University of Texas, San Antonio, USA
Christian Timmerer, Klagenfurt University, Austria
George Tziritas, University of Crete, Greece
Paulo Villegas, Telefonica I+D, Spain
Marcel Worring, University of Amsterdam, NL

Yahoo! Pipes versus Google Feedburner

Early November Google Feedburner started to have issues with feeds coming from Yahoo! Pipes:

Error getting URL: 999 – Unknown

This error message caused a lot of discussions at both Google and Yahoo! forums (e.g., here, here, and here) and others started to blog about it. Someone provided a workaround using a PHP script but this requires a Web server where this script is running.

Therefore, I discovered another workaround which is http://www.xfruits.com/ that one simply can put in between Yahoo! Pipes and Google Feedburner. That is, just take the output feed of Yahoo! Pipes, use it as input to http://www.xfruits.com/ and burn this output using Google Feedburner and your feeds are back online again ....
PS: http://www.xfruits.com/ offers also other features which look very interesting.
PPS: I'm not affiliated with http://www.xfruits.com/and just found it during my search for a workaround to the 999 error issue.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

MPEG readies the standard for rich user experiences in internet television

--taken from here

Xian, China – The 90th MPEG meeting was held in Xian, China from the 26th to the 30th 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 91st 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

or

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.

Monday, November 9, 2009

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

--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

Friday, November 6, 2009

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

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:
  1. The Standard shall be based on technologies from Recommendations | International Standards unless no Recommendation | International Standard provides a solution satisfying the Requirements
  2. 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
  3. 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.
  1. Identify User: A Service that identifies Users in an AIT value chain
  2. Authenticate User: A Service that Authenticate Users in an AIT value chain
  3. Describe User: A Service that allows Description of Users of an AIT value chain
  4. Identify Content: A Service that allows Identification of Content in an AIT value chain
  5. Authenticate Content: A Service that allows Authentication of Content in an AIT value chain
  6. Describe Content: A Service that allows Users associate Metadata to Content in an AIT value chain
  7. Store Content: A Service that allows Users in an AIT value chain physically saves Content
  8. 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, …
  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. Deliver Content: A Service that allows Users to transfer Content between Users of an AIT value chain
  12. 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
  13. Interact with Content: A Service that allows Users interact with Content
  14. Identify Service: A Service that allows Users to assign a unique Identifier to Services of an AIT value chain
  15. Authenticate Service: A Service that allows Users to confirm the identity of a Service
  16. Describe Service: A Service that allows Users to associate metadata to Services of an AIT value chain
  17. Aggregate Service: A Service that allows Users to combine different Services at the technical level to an Aggregated Service of an AIT value chain
  18. Identify Device: A Service that allows Users to assign a unique Identifier to Devices of an AIT value chain
  19. Authenticate Device: A Service that allows Users to confirm the identity of a Device
  20. Describe Device: A Service that allows Users to describe Devices of an AIT value chain
  21. 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.
  22. 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
  23. Manage Event: A Service that caters to the life cycle of Events in an AIT value chain, e.g., to request and report Events
  24. Identify Group: A Service that allows Users to assign a unique Identifier to Groups of an AIT value chain
  25. Describe Group: A Service that allows Users to describe Groups of an AIT value chain
  26. Authenticate Group: A Service that allows Users to confirm the identity of a Group
  27. 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
  28. Search Entity: A Service that locate Entities such as Users, Device, Contents, or Services, in an AIT value chain satisfying some criteria
  29. 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)
  30. 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.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

MPEG Media Transport is taking shape

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