Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

In our increasingly wired world, consumers are demanding increased access to both video content and increased abilities for video conferencing. Not only are consumers demanding video downloads and video conferencing, but they want access on a wider range of devices including high definition TVs, computers, portable devices, and cell phones. Consumers also expect a good end-user experience on these devices, irrespective of device, bandwidth limitations, or network impairments. Challenges for video content providers and video conferencing applications include how to serve customers on this broad range of technologies and how to maximize video quality even when network impairments are present. To best meet these demands, content providers and video conferencing applications should look to switching to scalable video coding technologies and content adaptation where content can be tuned on-the-fly towards the display resolution, frame rate, and bandwidth restrictions for each end-user, all in a way that it is done intelligently, ideally from a single video encoding. Our research focuses on developing video codecs that are computationally efficient, can handle a broad range of display resolutions and frame rates, is perceptually tuned to maximize end-user experience, can be adapted to robustly handle time-varying network conditions and impairments, and improved potential for real-time operation at higher resolutions and frame rates. We also aim to develop session mobility and content adaptability based on user profiles and preferences into the scalable video delivery, which will allow for easy switching between devices and networks as well as allow content to be tuned towards the user, such as to handle on-the-fly parental ratings or targeted advertisements for advertisement supported content.