Multimedia Communication
ACMMM’19 Tutorial: A Journey towards Fully Immersive Media Access
Abstract: Universal media access as proposed in the late 90s, early 2000 is now reality. Thus, we can generate, distribute, share, and consume any media content, anywhere, anytime, and with/on any device. A major technical breakthrough was the adaptive streaming over HTTP resulting in the standardization of MPEG-DASH, which is now successfully deployed in HTML5 environments thanks to corresponding media source extensions (MSE). The next big thing in adaptive media streaming is virtual reality applications and, specifically, omnidirectional (360°) media streaming, which is currently built on top of the existing adaptive streaming ecosystems. This tutorial provides a detailed overview of adaptive streaming of both traditional and omnidirectional media within HTML5 environments. The tutorial focuses on the basic principles and paradigms for adaptive streaming – both traditional and omnidirectional media – as well as on already deployed content generation, distribution, and consumption workflows. Additionally, the tutorial provides insights into standards and emerging technologies in the adaptive streaming space. Finally, the tutorial includes the latest approaches for immersive media streaming enabling 6DoF DASH through Point Cloud Compression (PCC) and concludes with open research issues and industry efforts in this domain.
Lecturers: Christian Timmerer, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt & Bitmovin, Inc.
Ali C. Begen, Ozyegin University and Networked Media Read more
IEEE JSAC: Multimedia Economics for Future Networks: Theory, Methods, and Applications
Authors: Wen Ji, Zhu Li, H. Vincent Poor, Christian Timmerer, and Wenwu Zhu
Abstract: With the growing integration of telecommunication networks, Internet of Things (IoT), and 5G networks, there is a tremendous demand for multimedia services over heterogeneous networks. According to recent survey reports, mobile video traffic accounted for 60 percent of total mobile data traffic in 2016, and it will reach up to 78 percent by the end of 2021. Users’ daily lives are inundated with multimedia services, such as online video streaming (e.g., YouTube and Netflix), social networks (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter), IoT and machine generated video (e.g, surveillance cameras), and multimedia service providers (e.g., Over-the-Top (OTT) services). Multimedia data is thus becoming the dominant traffic in the near future for both wired and wireless networks.
W. Ji, Z. Li, H. V. Poor, C. Timmerer and W. Zhu, “Guest Editorial Multimedia Economics for Future Networks: Theory, Methods, and Applications,” in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 37, no. 7, pp. 1473-1477, July 2019.
doi: 10.1109/JSAC.2019.2918962
ACM NOSSDAV’19 paper on Bandwidth Prediction in Low-Latency Chunked Streaming received Excellence in DASH award at ACM MMSys 2019
Authors: Abdelhak Bentaleb (National University of Singapore), Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria Universität & Bitmovin Inc,), Ali C. Begen(Ozyegin University), and Roger Zimmermann (National University of Singapore)
Abstract: HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) with chunked transfer encoding can be used to reduce latency without sacrificing the coding ef- ficiency. While this allows a media segment to be generated and delivered at the same time, it also causes grossly inaccurate band- width measurements, leading to incorrect bitrate selections. To overcome this effect, we design a novel Adaptive bitrate scheme for Chunked Transfer Encoding (ACTE) that leverages the unique nature of chunk downloads. It uses a sliding window to accurately measure the available bandwidth and an online linear adaptive filter to predict the available bandwidth into the future. Results show that ACTE achieves 96% measurement accuracy, which translates to a 64% reduction in stalls and a 27% increase in video quality.
Links:
– Slides/PDF: https://multimediacommunication.blogspot.com/2019/04/acm-nossdav19-bandwidth-prediction-in.html
– DASH Industry Forum Excellence in DASH Award at ACM MMSys 2019: https://multimediacommunication.blogspot.com/2019/06/dash-if-awarded-excellence-in-dash.html
QoMEX’19: Tile-based Streaming of 8K Omnidirectional Video: Subjective and Objective QoE Evaluation
Autor: Raimund Schatz (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology), Anatoliy Zabrovskiy (Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt), Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Bitmovin Inc.)
Abstract: Omnidirectional video (ODV) streaming applications are becoming increasingly popular. They enable a highly immersive experience as the user can freely choose her/his field of view within the 360-degree environment. Current deployments are fairly simple but viewport-agnostic which inevitably results in high storage/bandwidth requirements and low Quality of Experience (QoE). A promising solution is referred to as tile- based streaming which allows to have higher quality within the user’s viewport while quality outside the user’s viewport could be lower. However, empirical QoE assessment studies in this domain are still rare. Thus, this paper investigates the impact of different tile-based streaming approaches and configurations on the QoE of ODV. We present the results of a lab-based subjective evaluation in which participants evaluated 8K omnidirectional video QoE as influenced by different (i) tile-based streaming approaches (full vs. partial delivery), (ii) content types (static vs. moving camera), and (iii) tile encoding quality levels determined by different quantization parameters. Our experimental setup is characterized by high reproducibility since relevant media delivery aspects (including the user’s head movements and dynamic tile quality adaptation) are already rendered into the respective processed video sequences. Additionally, we performed a complementary objective evaluation of the different test sequences focusing on bandwidth efficiency and objective quality metrics. The results are presented in this paper and discussed in detail which confirm that tile-based streaming of ODV improves visual quality while reducing bandwidth requirements.
Acknowledgment: This work was supported in part by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under the Next Generation Video Streaming project “PROMETHEUS”.
Talk of Philipp Moll on RAFNET Workshop 2019
Philipp Moll presented the paper “Distributing the Game State of Online Games: Towards an NDN Version of Minecraft” on the 6th International Workshop on Research Advancements in Future Networking Technologies. The Workshop was held in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Communications 2019 in Shanghai.
Authors: Philipp Moll, Sebastian Theuermann, Hermann Hellwagner (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Jeff Burke (UCLA)
Abstract: Online games nowadays play an undeniably important role in the entertainment industry. The continuously increasing popularity of these services goes hand in hand with increased complexity of technical challenges. The networking part of current games relies on decades-old technologies, which were never intended to be used for today’s large-scale online games. Replacing the currently used connection-oriented networking approach by a content-centric architecture could yield advantages reaching beyond only avoiding inefficiencies found in IP-based online games. We propose a concept for a distributed Minecraft architecture, making use of these advantages by utilizing Named Data Networking (NDN) as the architectural basis. Our design decisions were guided by the insights we gained from examining Minecraft as a representative of current online games.
ACM NOSSDAV’19 paper on “Bandwidth Prediction in Low-Latency Chunked Streaming” accepted
Authors: Abdelhak Bentaleb, Christian Timmerer, Ali C. Begen, and Roger Zimmermann
Abstract: HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) with chunked transfer encoding can be used to reduce latency without sacrificing the coding ef- ficiency. While this allows a media segment to be generated and delivered at the same time, it also causes grossly inaccurate bandwidth measurements, leading to incorrect bitrate selections. To overcome this effect, we design a novel Adaptive bitrate scheme for Chunked Transfer Encoding (ACTE) that leverages the unique nature of chunk downloads. It uses a sliding window to accurately measure the available bandwidth and an online linear adaptive filter to predict the available bandwidth into the future. Results show that ACTE achieves 96% measurement accuracy, which translates to a 64% reduction in stalls and a 27% increase in video quality.
Acknowledgment: This research has been supported in part by the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 under MOE’s official grant number T1 251RES1820 and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under the Next Generation Video Streaming project “PROMETHEUS”.
Keywords: HAS; ABR; DASH; CMAF; low-latency; HTTP chunked transfer encoding; bandwidth measurement and prediction; RLS.
Link: http://nossdav.org/2019/
Article “Active Online Learning for Social Media Analysis to Support Crisis Management” published in the “early access” area of the prestigious journal IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
The paper “Active Online Learning for Social Media Analysis to Support Crisis Management” was published as an “early access” article in the journal IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (Q1 in ScimagoJR). The research leading to these results received funding from the EU FP7 Programme under grant agreement no. 261817 and was performed in collaboration with Bournemouth University, UK.
Authors: Daniela Pohl (AAU Klagenfurt, Inst. of Information Technology), Abdelhamid Bouchachia (Bournemouth University, Dept. of Computing, UK), Hermann Hellwagner (AAU Klagenfurt, Inst. of Information Technology)
Abstract: People use social media (SM) to describe and discuss different situations they are involved in, like crises. It is therefore worthwhile to exploit SM contents to support crisis management, in particular by revealing useful and unknown information about the crises in real-time. Read more
QoMEX’19 paper on “Tile-based Streaming of 8K Omnidirectional Video: Subjective and Objective QoE Evaluation” accepted
Authors: Raimund Schatz (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology), Anatoliy Zabrovskiy (Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt), Christian Timmerer(Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Bitmovin Inc.)
Abstract: Omnidirectional video (ODV) streaming applications are becoming increasingly popular. They enable a highly immersive experience as the user can freely choose her/his field of view within the 360-degree environment. Current deployments are fairly simple but viewport-agnostic which inevitably results in high storage/bandwidth requirements and low Quality of Experience (QoE). A promising solution is referred to as tile- based streaming which allows to have higher quality within the user’s viewport while quality outside the user’s viewport could be lower. However, empirical QoE assessment studies in this domain are still rare. Thus, this paper investigates the impact of different tile-based streaming approaches and configurations on the QoE of ODV. We present the results of a lab-based subjective evaluation in which participants evaluated 8K omnidirectional video QoE as influenced by different (i) tile-based streaming approaches (full vs. partial delivery), (ii) content types (static vs. moving camera), and (iii) tile encoding quality levels determined by different quantization parameters. Our experimental setup is characterized by high reproducibility since relevant media delivery aspects (including the user’s head movements and dynamic tile quality adaptation) are already rendered into the respective processed video sequences. Additionally, we performed a complementary objective evaluation of the different test sequences focusing on bandwidth efficiency and objective quality metrics. The results are presented in this paper and discussed in detail which confirm that tile-based streaming of ODV improves visual quality while reducing bandwidth requirements.
Index Terms: Omnidirectional Video, Tile-based Streaming, Subjective Testing, Objective Metrics, Quality of Experience
Acknowledgment: This work was supported in part by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under the Next Generation Video Streaming project “PROMETHEUS”.
Hermann Hellwagner appointed Member of Scientific Board of Christian Doppler Research Association
Prof. Hellwagner, head of ITEC, has been appointed Member of the Scientific Board of the CD Research Association for the period of 2019. The Christian Doppler Research Association promotes cooperation between science and business, whereas the Scientific Board and its members serve as scientific advisory committee to ensure the quality of research. The CDG Scientific Board consists of up to 45 members from Academia and Business. Prof. Hellwagner’s appointment is effective from January, 2019.