IEEE MIPR'18: Automated Objective and Subjective Evaluation of HTTP Adaptive Streaming Systems

Automated Objective and Subjective Evaluation of HTTP Adaptive Streaming Systems

Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt / Bitmovin), Anatoliy Zabrovskiy (Petrozavodsk State University / Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), and Ali C. Begen (Ozyegin University / Networked Media)

Invited paper at IEEE MIPR 2018

PDF available here (coming soon)

Abstract: Streaming audio and video content currently accounts for the majority of the internet traffic and is typically deployed over the top of the existing infrastructure. We are facing the challenge of a plethora of media players and adaptation algorithms showing different behavior but lack a common framework for both objective and subjective evaluation of such systems. This paper aims to close this gap by (i) proposing such a framework, (ii) describing its architecture, (iii) providing an example evaluation, (iv) and discussing open issues.

Slides:

Automated Objective and Subjective Evaluation of HTTP Adaptive Streaming Systems from Christian Timmerer

QoX: What is it really?

ETSI TC on Human Factors

This article provides a very good article around QoX where X stands for anything, specifically it encompasses Quality of Service (QoS), Class of Service (CoS), Grade of Service (GoS), Quality of Resilience (QoR), and - last but not least - Quality of Experience (QoE).

At the beginning the article provides an overview about different QoS definitions and application/traffic/service classes as defined by various standard-developing organizations (SDOs) such as ITU-T, IETF, 3GPP, and IEEE. Also an attempt to perform the mapping between service classes defined within various approaches is given. Additionally, no so well-known terms such as Grade of Service (GoS) and Quality of Resilience are described.

The article provides a good definition of Quality of Experience (QoE), its various dimensions, and how it relates to the other QoX terms and to a general model which defines three levels of QoS: intrinsic (network performance; ITU-T E.800), perceived (QoS; ITU-T G.1000), and assessed (QoE; ITU-T P.10). It is concluded that QoE is somewhere on the border between perceived and assessed which I tend to agree. Interestingly, the article points out the various dimensions of QoE including environmental, psychological, and sociological factors such as user expectation, experience with similar services, opinions of others (i.e., social networks), pricing policies, location-based factors, etc. Also, QoE measures and metrics, classification of QoE evaluation methods, and the relationship between QoE and intrinsic quality parameters are highlighted.

Finally, the article is concluded with open issues clusters into scientific, technical, economical, and legal challenges.

In particular, I like:

• the introduction into the terminology and how QoX is realized in various SDOs (ITU-T, IETF, 3GPP, IEEE);
• the definition of QoE and its variants; and
• the challenges at the end.

However, I'm missing vital, novel, future applications in/around QoX, otherwise one might think that the aim of this research is providing a solution/fix to current issues only (btw. that's fine, don't get me wrong ;-)

Citation:
Stankiewicz, R.; Cholda, P.; Jajszczyk, A.; , "QoX: What is it really?," Communications Magazine, IEEE , vol.49, no.4, pp.148-158, April 2011
doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2011.5741159

Book announcement - "High-Quality Visual Experience"

Mrak, Marta; Grgic, Mislav; Kunt, Murat (Eds.)

1st Edition., 2010, X, 550 p. 164 illus. in color., Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-642-12801-1

Abstract: Last few years have seen rapid acceptance of high-definition television (HDTV) technology around the world. This technology has been hugely successful in delivering more realistic television experience at home and accurate imaging for professional applications. Adoption of high definition continues to grow as consumers demand enhanced features and greater quality of content. Following this trend, natural evolution of visualisation technologies will be in the direction of fully realistic visual experience and highly precise imaging. However, using the content of even higher resolution and quality is not straightforward as such videos require significantly higher access bandwidth and more processing power. Therefore, methods for radical reduction of video bandwidth are crucial for realisation of high visual quality. Moreover, it is desirable to look into other ways of accessing visual content, solution to which lies in innovative schemes for content delivery and consumption. This book presents selected chapters covering technologies that will enable greater flexibility in video content representation and allow users to access content from any device and to interact with it.

Keywords » 3D Visual Experience - High Dynamic Range Video - High-Dimensional Video Signals - Super Resolution - Ultra High Definition Content Generation - Visual Experience

Table of Contents:

Part I: Quality of Visual Information

• Automatic Prediction of Perceptual Video Quality: Recent Trends and Research Directions by Anush K. Moorthy, Alan C. Bovik
• Quality of Experience for High Definition Presentations – Case: Digital Cinema by Andrew Perkis, Fitri N. Rahayu, Ulrich Reiter, Junyong You, Touradj Ebrahimi
• Quality of Visual Experience for 3D Presentation – Stereoscopic Image by Junyong You, Gangyi Jiang, Liyuan Xing, Andrew Perkis

Part II: Video Coding for High Resolutions

• The Development and Standardization of Ultra High Definition Video Technology by Tokumichi Murakami
• Compression Formats for HD Recording and Production by Joeri Barbarien, Marc Jacobs, Adrian Munteanu
• Super Hi-Vision and Its Encoding System by Shinichi Sakaida
• A Flexible Super High Resolution Video CODEC and Its Trial Experiments by Takeshi Yoshitome, Ken Nakamura, Kazuto Kamikura
• Mathematical Modeling for High Frame-Rate Video Signal by Yukihiro Bandoh, Seishi Takamura, Hirohisa Jozawa, Yoshiyuki Yashima

Part III: Visual Content Upscaling

• Next Generation Frame Rate Conversion Algorithms by Osman Serdar Gedik, Engin Turetken, Abdullah Aydın Alatan
• Spatiotemporal Video Upscaling Using Motion- Assisted Steering Kernel (MASK) Regression by Hiroyuki Takeda, Peter van Beek, Peyman Milanfar
• Temporal Super Resolution Using Variational Methods by Sune Høgild Keller, Fran ̧cois Lauze, Mads Nielsen
• Synthesizing Natural Images Using Spatial Layout Information by Ling Shao, Ruoyun Gao

Part IV: 3D Visual Content Processing and Displaying

• The Use of Color Information in Stereo Vision Processing by Wided Miled, Beatrice Pesquet-Popescu
• 3D Object Classification and Segmentation Methods by Martin Zagar, Mario Kovac, Josip Knezovic, Hrvoje Mlinaric, Daniel Hofman
• Three-Dimensional Video Contents Exploitation in Depth Camera-Based Hybrid Camera System by Sung-Yeol Kim, Andreas Koschan, Mongi A. Abidi, Yo-Sung Ho
• Improving 3D Visual Experience by Controlling the Perceived Depth Distortion by Jessica Prevoteau, Sylvia Chalencon-Piotin, Didier Debons, Laurent Lucas, Yannick Remion
• 3D Visual Experience by Peter Tamas Kovacs, Tibor Balogh
• 3D Holoscopic Imaging Technology for Real- Time Volume Processing and Display by Amar Aggoun

Part V: Accessing Technologies for Visual Content

• Video Streaming with Interactive Pan/Tilt/Zoom by Aditya Mavlankar, Bernd Girod
• End-to-End Management of Heterogeneous Environments Enabling Quality of Experience by Christian Timmerer, Maria Teresa Andrade, Alberto Leon Martin
• Quality-Driven Coding and Prioritization of 3D Video over Wireless Networks by Sabih Nasir, Chaminda T.E.R. Hewage, Zaheer Ahmad, Marta Mrak, Stewart Worrall, Ahmet Kondoz
• Scalable Indexing of HD Video by Jenny Benois-Pineau, Sandrine Anthoine, Claire Morand, Jean- Philippe Domenger, Eric Debreuve, Wafa Bel Haj Ali, Paulo Piro
• Stereo Correspondence in Information Retrieval by Huiyu Zhou, Abdul H. Sadka

Further information can be found here.

Multimedia conferences this week

I just saw on my calendar that this week there are a couple of multimedia-related events worth to report here:

• MMedia2010 (June 13-19, 2010 - Athens/Glyfada, Greece), 2nd International Conference on Advances in Multimedia, where our department had a couple of papers in the program ranging from self-organizing multimedia systems and transcoding to peer-to-peer architectures.
• WoWMoM2010 (June 14-17, 2010 - Montreal, Canada), International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, where the program covers all layers in the network related to wireless and multimedia. Interestingly, the program includes a PhD forum and industry track.
• IWQoS2010 (June 16-19, 2010 - Beijing, China), International Workshop on Quality of Service, where Henning Schulzrinne is giving a keynote entitled "25 years of quality of service research - where next?". In general, this workshop is the QoS workshop in the world and the program is available here (there's a session about overlays and peer-to-peer networks).
• FMN2010 (June 17-18, 2010 - Krakow, Poland), 3rd International Workshop on Future Multimedia Networking, where the program is only available as PDF and there's also a session on QoS and Quality of Experience (QoE).

CfP: Special Session on "Visual Quality Measurement" of 2010 IEEE Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia (PCM2010)

Special Session "Visual Quality Measurement" of 2010 IEEE Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia (PCM2010,http://pcm2010.fudan.edu.cn/) to be held from 21st to 24th September 2010 in the World Expo 2010 city Shanghai, China. As in previous editions of this series, the Proceedings of PCM2010 will be published in a book series of Lecture Notes in Computer Science by Spriner.

************** About the Conference *****************

  Since its inception in 2000, PCM has rapidly grown into a major conference on multimedia in the Asia-Pacific Rim region and built up its reputation  around the world. PCM has set up a vibrant forum for the community and brought researchers, developers, practitioners, and educators together to  disseminate their new discoveries in the field which have contributed significant to the success of the preceding PCMs conducted in Thailand (2009),  Taiwan (2008), Hong Kong (2007), China (2006), Korea (2005), Japan (2004), Singapore (2003), Taiwan (2002), China (2001), and Australia (2000). The technical quality of PCM has also improved significantly. In particular, PCM 2006 reached a record low paper exception rate at 16% in 2006.

**************    Focused Topics    *****************

  The motivation for this special session is to highlight the importance, challenges, and applications of visual media quality assessment. We invite researchers to submit original papers in all areas related to automatic visual media quality assessment including, but not limited to, the following  topics:

  - Global and impairment-specific visual quality assessment metrics

  - Full-reference, reduced-reference, and no-reference visual quality assessment of still-pictures and video

  - Visual quality assessment of 3D visual data and 3D models

  - Visual quality assessment of High-Definition image and video content

  - Statistical methods for automatic visual quality assessment

  - Perceptual / Biologically-inspired automatic visual quality assessment

  - Visual quality metrics for specific applications

**************    Important Dates   *****************

  Full paper submission due: Apr.24, 2010

**************   Paper Submission   *****************

  Authors should prepare their papers using the LNCS template and papers should not be more than 12 pages long.

  Please submit the paper title & abstract to me: xiao-dong.gu@thomson.net  before Apr.20, and submit the full paper through the conference paper submission systemhttp://pcm2010.fudan.edu.cn/ before Apr.24

Best regards,

Session Organizer:

Xiaodong Gu, Thomson Corporate Research, Beijing, China

Xing Xie, Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China

Final CfP QoMEX

Final Call for Papers - 5 days left - *firm deadline*!

The 2nd International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience - QoMEX'10
June 21-23, 2010  Trondheim / Norway
http://www.qomex.org/

Technical Sponsorship by
- IEEE
- IEEE Signal Processing Society
- IEEE Norway Section
- IEEE Norway Section Joint Chapter on Signal Processing, Information Theory and Communications
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear colleagues,
the International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX) brings together leading professionals and scientists working on methods for evaluating multimedia quality as user experience. It provides an interdisciplinary platform for people from engineering, psychology, sociology, and business. Following the very successful first workshop in San Diego in July 2009, the second will be held in Trondheim, Norway, on June 21-23, 2010.


Topics include:

* User Experience Assessment and Enhancement

* Visual User Experience (Image/Video/Graphics)

* Auditory User Experience (Speech/Audio)

* QoE for Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Realities

* Link between QoS, QoE and Acceptance

* Psychological and Sociological Dimension of QoE

* Standardization Activities in Multimedia Quality Evaluation

Confirmed plenary talks:

Dr. John G. Beerends, TNO, The Netherlands Dr. Andrew B. Watson, NASA Ames Research Center, USA

Important dates:

Submission deadline:          February 14, 2010

Notification of acceptance:   April 1, 2010

Camera ready submission:      May 1, 2010

Workshop:                     June 21-23, 2010

Further information:

Download a PDF version of the call for papers at http://www.qomex2010.org/QoMEX2010_CfP.pdf or visit the QoMEX website at http://www.qomex.org

Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEx)

What is QoMEx? I think it can be explained as a derivation of Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) whereby the latter is an extension of the former taking a user-centric approach, i.e., it is the user who is ultimately consuming a service and, therefore, shall be the focus of attention (see here or here for more details). An interview with Video Quality Experts can be found here.

Quality of Multimedia Experience is basically an application of QoE in the field of multimedia (communication), e.g., Video on Demand, streaming, audio/video conferencing, voice applications, etc. etc.

Recently, quite a few multimedia events (conferences, workshops, symposia) appeared on the horizon and I'd like to name just a few:

• Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEx)
• Workshop on Quality of Experience for Multimedia Content Sharing (QoEMCS)
• Workshop on Image Media Quality and its Applications (IMQA 2010) 
• Workshop on Video Processing and Quality Metrics for Consumer Electronics (VPQM 2010)
• Workshop on Quality of Service (IWQoS)
• ITU-T Workshop on End-to-End QoE/QoS
• Conference on Heterogeneous Networking for Quality, Reliability, Security and Robustness (QShine2009) 
• Conference on Communication Theory, Reliability, and Quality of Service (CTRQ 2010) 
• Workshop on the Evaluation of Quality of Service through Simulation in the Future Internet(QoSim 2009)

"My own" two workshops related to QoS ;-)

• ENTHRONE Workshop on End-to-End QoS through Integrated Management of Content, Networks, and Terminal 2008 
• Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service for Universal Multimedia Access (E2E-QoS4UMA 2006)

If you think something is missing here, please drop me a note...

The Fourth International Workshop on Image Media Quality and its Applications (IMQA 2010)

Fourth International Workshop on Image Media Quality and its Applications (IMQA 2010)

http://www.imqa.jp/IMQA2010/

Important dates:

Submission deadline:          February 19, 2010 (Extended !!)

Notification of acceptance:   March 20, 2010

Camera ready submission:      April 10, 2010

Workshop:                     May 13-14, 2010

The Fourth International Workshop on Image Media Quality and its Applications (IMQA 2010) is a forum for leading researchers and developers from industry and academia to discuss state-of-the-art and novel image media quality technologies, theories, methods, and applications of quality metrics in industry.

Scope

Topics of interest for submissions should include Image Media Quality, but are not limited to:

* Image Capture Devices (CCD, CMOS, etc.)

* Image Capture System (TV Camera, Digital Still Camera, Facsimile, Scanner, 3Dimage Input, etc.)

* Display (CRT, LCD, PDP, EL, etc.), Display System, 3D-Display, Holograph

* Hard Copy (Ink Jet Printer, Laser Printer, etc.), Graphic Arts (Halftone Screen, Error Diffusion, etc.)

* QoS Control and Scheduling, IP Video Conferencing, Video phone, Scalable Coding,

* Digital Broadcasting System, 3DTV, Super-High-Definition TV

* Multimedia Database (Content Recognition, Analysis, Representation, Indexing, and Retrieval)

* Coding (JPEG, JPEG2000, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, etc)

* Assessment Test Methodology (DSIS, DSCQS, SSCQE, etc.)

* Objective Picture Quality Metric (VQEG, etc.)

* Image Reproduction, Image Restoration, Computer Graphics, Computer Vision、Animation, Virtual Reality

* Human Perception, Psychophysics, Color Reproduction, Hi-fidelity , Sensibility Information

* Security (Data hiding, Watermarking, Individual Identification, etc.)

* Human-Machine Interface, Welfare

Submission

Prospective authors are invited to submit an electronic version (using PDF) of a 2-4 page abstract of their paper for review. The authors of accepted papers are requested to submit the final camera-ready manuscript of 4-10 pages that will appear in the workshop proceedings.

Extended versions of selected contributions will be published in forth coming special issue of Trans. IEICE-EA.

CfP: 2nd IEEE Int'l Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience - QoMEX 2010 June 21-23, Trondheim / Norway

The 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience - QoMEX'10

June 21-23, 2010 Trondheim / Norway
http://www.qomex.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear colleagues,
the International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX) brings together leading professionals and scientists working on methods for evaluating multimedia quality as user experience. It provides an interdisciplinary platform for people from engineering, psychology, sociology, and business. Following the very successful first workshop in July 2009 in San Diego, the second will be held in Trondheim, Norway, on June 21-23, 2010.

Topics include:

• User Experience Assessment and Enhancement
• Visual User Experience (Image/Video/Graphics)
• Auditory User Experience (Speech/Audio)
• QoE for Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Realities
• Link between QoS, QoE and Acceptance
• Psychological and Sociological Dimension of QoE
• Standardization Activities in Multimedia Quality Evaluation
  

Confirmed plenary talks:

• Dr. John G. Beerends, TNO, The Netherlands
• Dr. Andrew B. Watson, NASA Ames Research Center, USA

Important dates:

• Submission deadline: February 14, 2010
• Notification of acceptance: April 1, 2010
• Camera ready submission: May 1, 2010
• Workshop: June 21-23, 2010

Further information:
Download a PDF version of the call for papers at http://www.qomex2010.org/QoMEX2010_CfP.pdf
or visit the QoMEX website at http://www.qomex.org

1st edition of QoMEx revisted

The first edition of the International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEx) ended today and I'd like to thank the general chairs Touradj Ebrahimi (EPFL/NTNU) and Khaled El-Maleh (Qualcomm) for making this happen and, in particular, Qualcomm for hosting the event. It was a very good workshop with a lot of interesting papers presenting research results around the topics user experience assessment/enhancement, visual/auditory user experience, and standardization activities in multimedia quality evaluation.

The technical program provided a set of plenary talks (incl. a broad range of topics), oral and poster sessions, and a panel about tools, targets, and trends in the area of Quality of Experience (QoE). The panel - organized by Fernando Pereira - was particularly interesting as each panelist provided one slide related to tools, targets, and trends respectively.

Sebastian Möller (Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Berlin University of Technology) reported that QoE is being recognized and considered by operators. Stefan Winkler, author of the Digital Video Quality book, has shown the the "QoS/QoE life-cycle" which he adapted from ITU-T Rec. G.1000 and COM12-C185-E. He is also very active in the Video Services Forum, Inc. (VSF) and ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF) which provide standards in the area of QoE.
Alan Bovik said he is a video guy that likes perception. Furthermore, he identified the need for better models how image/video is perceived which indeed requires interdisciplinary as shown in the left figure. Finally, Gary Sullivan's target regarding QoE is to have something like “This technology saves x% of the bit rate relative to that technology”. Towards the end of the panel Vittorio Baroncini proposed to merge VCEG and VQEG as the "only solution".

The winner of the Qualcomm Best Student Paper is "Subjective assessment of H.264/AVC video sequences transmitted over a noisy channel" co-authored by Francesca De Simone et.al. The best paper award goes to "Gradient Ascent Paired-Comparison Subjective Quality Testing" co-authored by Stephen Voran and Andrew Catellier. Congratulations to the winners and, of course, also the nominees (seven in each category) who will be invited to submit their papers to a special issue on QoE in an EURASIP journal.

On the logistics, they managed to provide an online stream of all the sessions via ustream, recorded all sessions using a 3D camera, and collected the presentations of all speakers. I'm sure sooner or later these resources become available at the QoMEx Web site.

Finally, the next edition - QoMEx 2010 - will be in Trondheim, Norway hosted by NTNU with Andrew Perkis as the general chair in the second half of June 2010. It seems he will have a hard time to attach to QoMEx 2009 but I'm also sure he will manage it and will be able to keep, or even increase, the level of quality in this workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience. See you at QoMEx 2010 and stay tuned...

PS: Forgot that we had a paper there and details about this can be found here.

IWQOS 2009 Call for Participation

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

IEEE IWQoS 2009
17th IEEE International Workshop on Quality of Service
July 13-15, 2009
Charleston, South Carolina
http://www.ieee-iwqos.org/

You are cordially invited to participate in the upcoming 17th IEEE International Workshop on Quality of Service (IEEE IWQoS 2009) sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society.

IWQoS 2009 offers 9 exciting technical sessions with 28 regular papers and 10 short papers. It also features two keynote talks by Professor Peter Steenkiste (Carnegie Mellon University) and Professor Roch Guerin (University of Pennsylvania). For more details, please visit http://www.ieee-iwqos.org/program.php.

Please note that the early registration deadline is June 26 and the deadline for a reduced room rate at the Charleston Place Hotel is June 13.

We look forward to welcoming you in Charleston, SC.

Invitation to attend: First International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience- San Diego July 29-31 2009

On behalf of the organizing committee of the First International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience

(QoMEX 2009), we would like to invite you to attend this exciting event that will happen in San Diego, July 29-31 2009.

QoMEX'09 features oral presentations, exhibits, panels and poster sessions in order to provide attendees with

various channels to exchange and acquire information about the latest developments and future trends in the

field of multimedia user experience.

Highlights from the Technical Program:

Plenary Talks

"Innovating the Multimedia Experience"

Speaker: Mr. Dave Blakely, Senior Director, IDEO

"Haptic Design Guidelines and Tools for the Next Generation of User Experience"

Speaker: Dr. Christophe Ramstein, Chief Technology Officer, Immersion Corporation

"Light is a Two-Way Street: The Next 50 Years of Video"

Speaker: Dr. Bruce Flinchbaugh, Texas Instruments Fellow and Director of the Video & Image Processing Laboratory, TI, Dallas

"Comparison of Subjective Assessment Protocols for Digital Cinema Applications"

Speaker: Prof. Christine Fernandez-Maloigne, Professor of Signal and Image Processing in Poitiers University, France

More details about the talks:

http://www.qomex2009.org/PlenaryTalks.asp

Panel on "Quality of Experience: Tools, Targets and Trends"

Panel Chair: Prof. Fernando Pereira, Prof. ECE, Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal

Panelists:

Prof. Alan Bovik, Prof. and Chair, ECE, UT Austin

Dr. Gary Sulivan, Video Architect, Microsoft and Chairman, ITU/VCEG

Prof. Sebastian Moeller, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories and Berlin University of Technology

Dr. Stephen Winkler, Principal Technologist, Symmetricom

More details about the panel

http://www.qomex2009.org/Panel.asp

Technical papers will address the following major areas:

• User Experience Assessment and Enhancement

• Visual User Experience (Image/Video/Graphics)

• Auditory User Experience (Speech/Audio)

• Standardization Activities in Multimedia Quality Evaluation

See here for the list of papers

http://www.qomex2009.org/TechnicalProgram.asp

Registration

To register for the workshop please use this link

https://www.securecms.com/QOMEX2009/Registration.asp

Further information is available at: http://www.qomex.org

Not All Packets Are Equal

... is the title of a IEEE Internet Computing article comprising two parts.

Part 1 - Streaming Video Coding and SLA Requirements - describes the some Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics (i.e., delay, jitter, packet loss) and details some of the coding principles adopted in MPEG standards (and btw. others): subsampling, intra coding, inter coding, blocks, macroblocks, slices, frames, group of pictures (GoPs), decoding order vs. transmission order, and MPEG encapuslation within IP.

Part 2 - The Impact of Network Packet Loss on Video Quality - highlights the impact that different durations of IP packet loss have on the Quality of Experience (QoE) for IP-based video streaming services. It describe the visual impairments that result from such packet losses and present the results of testing and analysis to compare impairments for different loss durations for both MPEG-2-encoded standard and high-definition services.

Both arcticles are a very good starting point to get an overview of video coding and how to stream video data over IP-based networks. However, it mainly focuses on MPEG-2 and only mentions the current state-of-the-art codec, namely Advanced Video Coding (AVC). There are already papers available that investigate the impact of packet loss on video quality for AVC.

Nevertheless, the two papers are worth reading, written in an easy-to-read style, and also suitable for an audience not so familiar with video coding and transmission issues. Finally, it seems that there's another article planned in this series as indicated in the last sentence:

"In a future article, we hope to compare different network technology approaches for minimizing and recovering from video packet loss."

I'm looking forward to that ... (and please, bring more on AVC) -- thanks!

References

• J. Greengrass, J. Evans, A. C. Begen, "Not All Packets Are Equal, Part I: Streaming Video Coding and SLA Requirements," IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 70-75, Jan./Feb. 2009
• J. Greengrass, J. Evans, A. C. Begen, "Not All Packets Are Equal, Part 2: The Impact of Network Packet Loss on Video Quality," IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 74-82, Mar./Apr. 2009

First IEEE International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience

July 29-31, 2009
San Diego, CA, USA

A very interesting workshop co-chaired by Touradj Ebrahimi with the following topics:

• User Experience Assessment and Enhancement
• Visual User Experience (Image/Video/Graphics)
• Auditory User Experience (Speech/Audio)
• Standardization Activities in Multimedia Quality Evaluation
  

Important dates:
Submission deadline: March 1, 2009
Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2009
Camera ready submission: May 15, 2009

Further information can be found at http://www.qomex.org/.

Quality of Service (QoS) Mechanism Selection in SDP

The IESG (note: part of IETF) has approved a draft which enables negotiating which QoS mechanism to use for a particular media stream: end-to-end with a differentiation between upstream and downstream. Therefore, two new attributes have been defined: qos-mech-send and qos-mech-recv. However, currently only two QoS mechanisms are defined, namely nsis and rsvp. Other mechansims - existing or future ones - needs to be registerd through IANA. The following example describes a session which support RSVP and NSIS in both directions whith a preference on RSVP. That is, the order of the actual QoS mechanisms is important.

   m=audio 55000 RTP/AVP 0
   a=qos-mech-send: rsvp nsis
   a=qos-mech-recv: rsvp nsis

The current draft can be found here.