A Special Session on ‘Video Coding for Large Scale HTTP Adaptive Streaming Deployments‘ was organized by Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Mohammad Ghanbari (University of Essex, UK), and Alex Giladi (Comcast, USA) on July 2 at the 35th Picture Coding Symposium (PCS) 2021. Read more about it here.
With his master thesis about “Animating Characters using Deep Learning based Pose Estimation”, Fabian Schober won the “Dynatrace Outstanding IT-Thesis Award” (DO*IT*TA). The award brings attention to extraordinary theses, motivates creativity, and provides insight into modern technologies.
In his thesis, Fabian Schober focuses on animating 2D (video game) characters using the PoseNet pose estimation model. He delivers a proof of concept on how new machine learning technologies can assist in video game development. Read more at the University press release (German only).
Conference info: The 46th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN) October 4-7, 2021
Authors: Farzad Tashtarian (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Abdelhak Bentaleb (National University of Singapore), Reza Farahani (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Minh Nguyen (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Hermann Hellwagner (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), and Roger Zimmermann (National University of Singapore)
Abstract: Live User Generated Content (UGC) has become very popular in today’s video streaming applications, in particular with gaming and e-sport. However, streaming UGC presents unique challenges for video delivery. When dealing with the technical complexity of managing hundreds or thousands of concurrent streams that are geographically distributed, UGCsystems are forces to made difficult trade-offs with video quality and latency. Read more
Conference info: The 46th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN) October 4-7, 2021
Authors: Reza Farahani (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Farzad Tashtarian (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Hadi Amirpour (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Mohammad Ghanbari (School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, UK) and Hermann Hellwagner (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)
Abstract: With the increasing demand for video streaming applications, HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) technology has become the dominant video delivery technique over the Internet. Current HAS solutions only consider either client- or server-side optimization, which causes many problems in achieving high-quality video, leading to sub-optimal users’ experience and network resource utilization. Recent studies have revealed that network-assisted HAS techniques, by providing a comprehensive view of the network, can lead to more significant gains in HAS system performance. Read more
Successful review of the first research phase: Christian Doppler ‘pilot’ laboratory ATHENA to transition to a regular CD laboratory two years after launch. Read more about it at ATHENA website and the press release at AAU website.
Co-chairs:
TF7: Immersive Media Experiences (IMEx)
Immersive media applications are entering our daily lives starting from VR/AR/360° video applications to multi-sensory/multimedia experiences potentially addressing all human senses rather than focusing on hearing and seeing. The overall goal of providing Immersive Media Experiences (IMEx) to end-users is giving them the sensation of being part of the particular media which shall result in a worthwhile, informative user and quality of experience.
The actual objectives of this task force are as follows:
Authors: Shajulin Benedict, Prateek Agrawal, Radu Prodan
Link: Advanced Informatics for Computing Research, CCIS-Springer, 4th ICAICR 2020, Vol. 1393
Abstract: The push for agile pandemic analytic solutions has attained development-stage software modules of applications instead of functioning as full-fledged production-stage applications – i.e., performance, scalability, and energy-related concerns are not optimized for the underlying computing domains. And while the research continues to support the idea that reducing the energy consumption of algorithms improves the lifetime of battery-operated machines, advisable tools in almost any developer setting, an energy analysis report for R-based analytic programs is indeed a valuable suggestion. This article proposes an energy analysis framework for R-programs that enables data analytic developers, including pandemic-related application developers, to analyze the programs. It reveals an energy analysis report for R programs written to predict the new cases of 215 countries using random forest variants. Experiments were carried out at the IoT cloud research lab and the energy efficiency aspects were discussed in the article. In the experiments, ranger-based prediction program consumed 95.8 J.
Christian Timmerer, Tuesday, June 29, 2021
35th Picture Coding Symposium (PCS) 2021
Abstract: Video traffic on the Internet is constantly growing; networked multimedia applications consume a predominant share of the available Internet bandwidth. A major technical breakthrough and enabler in multimedia systems research and of industrial networked multimedia services certainly was the HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) technique. This resulted in the standardization of MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) which, together with HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), is widely used for multimedia delivery in today’s networks. Existing challenges in multimedia systems research deal with the trade-off between (i) the ever-increasing content complexity, (ii) various requirements with respect to time (most importantly, latency), and (iii) quality of experience (QoE). Optimizing towards one aspect usually negatively impacts at least one of the other two aspects if not both.
This situation sets the stage for our research work in the ATHENA Christian Doppler (CD) Laboratory (Adaptive Streaming over HTTP and Emerging Networked Multimedia Services; https://athena.itec.aau.at/), jointly funded by public sources and industry.
In this talk, we will present selected novel approaches and research results of the first year of the ATHENA CD Lab’s operation. We will highlight HAS-related research on (i) multimedia content provisioning (machine learning for video encoding); (ii) multimedia content delivery (support of edge processing and virtualized network functions for video networking); (iii) multimedia content consumption and end-to-end aspects (player-triggered segment retransmissions to improve video playout quality); and (iv) novel QoE investigations (adaptive point cloud streaming). We will also put the work into the context of the international multimedia systems research.
Authors: Nikita Karandikar, Rockey Abhishek, Nishant Saurabh, Zhiming Zhao, Alexander Lercher, Ninoslav Marina, Radu Prodan, Chunming Rong, Antorweep Chakravorty
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2021.100016
Abstract: Peak mitigation is of interest to power companies as peak periods may require the operator to over provision supply in order to meet the peak demand. Flattening the usage curve can result in cost savings, both for the power companies and the end users. Integration of renewable energy into the energy infrastructure presents an opportunity to use excess renewable generation to supplement supply and alleviate peaks. In addition, demand side management can shift the usage from peak to off peak times and reduce the magnitude of peaks. In this work, we present a data driven approach for incentive based peak mitigation. Understanding user energy profiles is an essential step in this process. We begin by analysing a popular energy research dataset published by the Ausgrid corporation. Extracting aggregated user energy behavior in temporal contexts and semantic linking and contextual clustering give us insight into consumption and rooftop solar generation patterns. We implement, and performance test a blockchain based prosumer incentivization system. The smart contract logic is based on our analysis of the Ausgrid dataset. Our implementation is capable of supporting 792,540 customers with a reasonably low infrastructure footprint.
Our paper about LensID – a CNN-RNN-based framework for irregularity detection in cataract surgery videos has been accepted at the prestigious MICCAI 2021 conference (International Conference on Medical Image Computing & Computer Assisted Intervention). Negin Ghamsarian will present the details of her work on this topic in the end of September.
Authors: Negin Ghamsarian, Mario Taschwer, Doris Putzgruber-Adamitsch, Stephanie Sarny, and Klaus Schoeffmann
Link: https://www.miccai2021.org/en/
