The media industry is currently being pulled in the often-opposing\ud
directions of increased realism (high resolution, stereoscopic,\ud
large screen) and personalization (selection and control of\ud
content, availability on many devices). We investigate the\ud
feasibility of an end-to-end format-agnostic approach to support\ud
both these trends. In this paper, different aspects of a format-\ud
agnostic capture, production, delivery and rendering system are\ud
discussed. At the capture stage, the concept of layered scene\ud
representation is introduced, including panoramic video and 3D\ud
audio capture. At the analysis stage, a virtual director component\ud
is discussed that allows for automatic execution of\ud
cinematographic principles, using feature tracking and saliency\ud
detection. At the delivery stage, resolution-independent\ud
audiovisual transport mechanisms for both managed and\ud
unmanaged networks are treated. In the rendering stage, a\ud
rendering process that includes the manipulation of audiovisual\ud
content to match the connected display and loudspeaker properties\ud
is introduced. Different parts of the complete system are revisited\ud
demonstrating the requirements and the potential of this advanced\ud
concept.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
User satisfaction is a key factor in the success of novel multimedia services. Yet, to enable service providers and network operators to control and maximize the quality (QoS, QoE) of delivered video streams, quite some challenges remain. In this paper, we particularly focus on three of them. First of all, objectively measuring video quality requires appropriate quality metrics and methods of assessing them in a real-time fashion. Secondly, the recent Scalable Video Coding (SVC) format opens opportunities for adapting video to the available (network) resources, yet the appropriate configuration of video encoding as well as real-time streaming adaptation are largely unaddressed research areas. Thirdly, while bandwidth reservation mechanisms in access/core networks do exist, service providers lack a means for guaranteeing QoS in the increasingly complex home networks (which they are not in full control of). In this paper we offer a broad view on these interrelated issues, by presenting the developments originating in a Flemish research project (including proof-of-concept demonstrations). From a developmental perspective, we propose an architecture combining a real-time video quality monitoring platform, on-thefly adaptation (optimizing the video quality) and QoS reservation in a heterogeneous home network based on UPnP QoS v3. From a research perspective, we propose a new subjective test procedure that revealed user preference for temporal scalability over quality scalability. In addition, an extensive study on optimizing HD SVC encoding in IPTV scenarios with fluctuating bandwidth showed that under certain bandwidth constraints (prohibiting sufficient fidelity) spatial scalability is a better option than quality scalability.
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