6178919
Proactive frame-skipping decision scheme for variable frame rate video coding
Many rate control algorithms focus on the adjustment of quantisation values to retain a certain buffer level, and arbitrary frame-skipping is often needed to keep the buffer from overflow at very low bit-rates. A content adaptive rate control is proposed to optimise the balance between spatial and temporal quality via active frame-skipping. The occurrence of frame-skipping is jointly dependent on the temporal and spatial quality of the video, and on the fullness of the buffer. This helps to achieve a consistent spatial and temporal quality and to enhance the overall perceptual quality. Experimental results show that the new scheme is simple but very effective, with large average PSNR gains and consistently improved visual quality, and the improvement in perceptual quality is much more significant than that in average PSNRs.
11110859
A locally-adaptive algorithm for measuring blocking artifacts in images and videos
Block transform coding is the most popular approach for image and video compression. The objective measurement of blocking artifacts plays an important role in the design, optimization, and assessment of image and video coding systems. This paper presents a new algorithm for measuring blocking artifacts in images and videos. It exhibits unique and useful features: 1) it examines the blocks individually so that it can measure the severity of blocking artifacts locally; 2) it is a one-pass algorithm in the sense that the image needs to be accessed only once; 3) it takes into account the blocking artifacts for high bit rate images and the flatness for the very low bit rate images; 4) the blocking artifacts measure is well-defined in the range of 0-10. Experiments on various still images and videos show that this blockiness measure is very efficient in terms of computational complexity and memory usage, and can produce consistent blocking artifacts measurement.
9260921
Complexity adaptive quantization for intra-frames in very low bit rate video coding
Conventional rate control schemes focus on the problem of finding an optimal quantization value for P- and B-frames. No rate control is available for the encoding of I-frames. This could pose big problems due to the large number of bits an I-frame could generate, and due to the fact that the number of bits varies drastically from sequence to sequence, depending on their image complexity. This problem becomes severe especially at very low bit rate. Therefore, a mechanism to allocate data bits to an I-frame according to its complexity is indispensable in order to have constant coding quality. This work presents a mechanism to establish for I-frames a generic relationship between the quantization value, data bits, and their image complexity. Experimental results show that this generic relationship provides a fairly accurate estimation of quantization value for an I-frame at given data bits and image complexity, and is very useful in controlling the data bits generated by an I-frame.
981043
Learning Event Durations from Event Descriptions
We have constructed a corpus of news articles in which events are annotated for estimated bounds on their duration. Here we describe a method for measuring inter-annotator agreement for these event duration distributions. We then show that machine learning techniques applied to this data yield coarse-grained event duration information, considerably outperforming a baseline and approaching human performance.
8588212
Temporal Aggregates in OWL-Time
In this paper, we describe our approach for representing temporal aggregates in OWL-Time, and a systematic way of mapping iCalendar recurrence sets to OWL-Time temporal sequences. We present several examples of natural language expressions for temporal aggregates and how they would be represented in OWL-Time; some examples can be described in both iCalendar and OWL-Time, while others can only be represented in OWL-Time. We also illustrate how we can translate from a natural language sentence to our representation.
39269573
An adaptive edge-preserving artifacts removal filter for video post-processing
We propose an adaptive edge-preserving artifacts removal filter (EPARF) for post-processing video compressed using block-based motion compensation so as to improve visual quality. The proposed filter is based on half-quadratic regularization, and it can adaptively remove both blocking and ringing artifacts while preserving object edges. The proposed algorithm has been applied to video sequences compressed by the MSRA scalable video coding (SVC) codec with block-based motion-compensated temporal filtering (MCTF). Experimental results demonstrate that EPARF can significantly improve both subjective and objective quality.
11841640
Accelerating Profile Queries in Elevation Maps
Elevation maps are a widely used spatial data representation in geographical information systems (GIS). Paths on elevation maps can be characterized by profiles, which describe relative elevation as a function of distance. In this research, we address the inverse of this mapping - given a profile, how to efficiently find paths that could have generated it. This is called the profile query problem. Profiles have a wide variety of uses that include registering tracking information, or even other maps, to a given map. We describe a probabilistic model to characterize the maximal likelihood that a point lying on a path matches the query profile. Propagation of such probabilities to neighboring points can effectively prune the search space. This model enables us to efficiently answer queries of arbitrary profiles with user-specified error tolerances. When compared to existing spatial index methods, our approach supports more flexible queries with orders of magnitude speedup.
18783473
A multi-objective-based non-stationary UAV assignment model for constraints handling using PSO
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assignment requires allocating vehicles to destinations to complete various jobs. It is a complex assignment problem with hard constraints, and potential dimensional explosion when the scenarios become more complicated and the size of problems increases. Moreover, the non-stationary UAV assignment problem, studied in the paper, is more difficult, since dynamic scenarios are introduced, e.g. change of the number, or different task requirements of targets and vehicle, etc. In this paper, a "Constraint-First-Objective- Next" model is proposed for the non-stationary problem. The proposed model can effectively handle constraints as an additional objective, including constraints expressed by nature language, and is flexible enough to be combined with kinds of intelligent computation algorithms. A local version of PSO is cooperated with the proposed model to solve non-stationary UAV assignment problems. Numerical experimental results illustrate that it can efficiently achieve the optima and demonstrate the effectiveness.
24069960
Study of Improved Hierarchy Genetic Algorithm Based on Adaptive Niches
Canonical genetic algorithms have the defects of pre-maturity and stagnation when applied in optimizing problems. In order to avoid the shortcomings, an adaptive niche hierarchy genetic algorithm (ANHGA) is proposed. The algorithm is based on the adaptive mutation operator and crossover operator to adjust the crossover rate and probability of mutation of each individual, whose mutation values are decided using individual gradient. This approach is applied in Percy and Shubert function optimization. Comparisons of niche genetic algorithm (NGA), hierarchy genetic algorithm (HGA) and ANHGA have been done by establishing a simulation model and the results of mathematics model and actual industrial model show that ANHGA is feasible and efficient in the design of multi-extremum.
6961558
Minimizing a stochastic maximum-reliability path
We consider a stochastic network interdiction problem in which the goal is to detect an evader, who selects a maximum-reliability path. Subject to a resource constraint, the interdictor installs sensors on a subset of the network’s arcs to minimize the value of the evader’s maximum-reliability path, i.e., to maximize the detection probability. When this decision is made, the evader’s origin–destination pair is known to the interdictor only through a probability distribution. Our model is framed as a stochastic mixed-integer program and solved by an enhanced L-shaped decomposition method. Our primary enhancement is via a valid inequality, which we call a step inequality. In earlier work [Morton et al., IIE Trans 39 (2007), 3–14], we developed step inequalities for the special case in which the evader encounters at most one sensor on an origin–destination path. Here, we generalize the step inequality to the case where the evader encounters multiple sensors. In this more general setting, the step inequality is tightly coupled to the decomposition scheme. An efficient separation algorithm identifies violated step inequalities and strengthens the linear programming relaxation of the L-shaped method’s master program. We apply this solution procedure with further computational enhancements to a collection of test problems. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 52(3), 111–119 2008
41075889
Efficient Compression of Multi-view Video Using Hierarchical B Pictures
3D and free viewpoint video are new types of natural video media that expand the user's sensation far beyond what is offered by traditional media. As video compression is a key issue in traditional video communications and the use of multi video streams makes it even more important for such applications. In this paper, we presented an investigation of the multi- view video coding structures with focus on exploiting hierarchical B pictures. We demonstrate hierarchical B pictures prediction structures, and present the advantage of several multi-view video coding prediction schemes. This demonstration will show the benefits of using hierarchical B pictures based on H.264/AVC. The simulation results demonstrate that the objective quality can be improved with the advanced MVC prediction structures in comparison to the simulcast coding structures.