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L’émergence des contenus multimédias sur Internet, l’accès aux contenus multimédias et leurs enrichissements constituent un vaste domaine de recherche. Cette thèse s’inscrit dans ce contexte, et présente la réalisation complète et opérationnelle d’une plate-forme de diffusion multimédia interopérable et ouverte. Après avoir spécifié l’architecture de la plate-forme en introduisant le support de tous types de médias, l’indexation efficace, la recherche de contenus et leurs visualisations en ligne, la première contribution de cette thèse est une extension de la norme MPEG 7 permettant d’assurer la gestion des contenus graphiques 3D, ainsi que des informations liées à un système multimédia. Cette extension a permis le développement d’une plate-forme de diffusion gérant tous types de contenus, appelée MyMultimédiaWorld.com, entièrement normalisée à l’aide de MPEG 7 et MPEG 4. La deuxième contribution porte sur les facilités d’accès à la plate-forme multimédia. D’une part, nous avons développé une solution simple et originale d’API d’accès aux contenus multimédia par de applications tierces. D’autre part, nous proposons une solution basée sur le principe d’API pour intégrer dans une plate-forme des algorithmes multimédias. Cette solution permet la création de nouveaux services à partir d’algorithmes externes. A partir des deux APIs, nous proposons une nouvelle approche pour l’évaluation automatique d’algorithmes multimédias. Les aspects clés de cette approche sont l’évaluation en ligne, des conditions identiques pour l’exécution des algorithmes et la mise à jour automatique des résultats. L’approche développée est démontrée à l’aide de deux benchmarks différents, le premier pour l’évaluation des algorithmes de compression de maillage 3D et le second pour le benchmark des descripteurs de formes 3D développé dans le cadre des projets FAME2 et POPS du pôle de compétitivité System@tic. Les avantages de cette approche ont été reconnus récemment par le comité de normalisation MPEG avec sa décision d’adopter www.MyMultimédiaWorld.com pour l’évaluation des algorithmes de compression de maillage 3D. / The emergency of the Internet as a medium for multimedia content, the manner to access the content including means of enriching it with semantic information constitute large research domains. This thesis situates in this context and introduces an operational implementation of an open and interoperable multimedia content distribution platform. After specifying the platform architecture introducing the support of all media types, effective indexation, content search and on-line visualisation, the first contribution of the thesis consists in several MPEG 7 extensions allowing 3D object description, as well as multimedia service specification. These extensions makes it possible a novel approach of asset management systems fully normalised with MPEG 7 and MPEG 4, the concept being demonstrated by the implementation of the www.MyMultimédiaWorld.com platform. The second contribution of the thesis concerns the fundaments and tools to ensure easy access to the multimedia platform. We developed an original solution based on an access API making possible to third party applications to access content and metadata resident into the platform. A second API, makes it possible to integrate multimedia processing algorithm directly in the platform, transforming it into a continuous evolving environment. The Web2.0 paradigm of user generated content is now extended to user generated functionality. Based on the two APIs, we proposed a novel approach for evaluation of multimedia related algorithms. The key aspects are the online processing, evolving content, execution of algorithms in identical conditions, always up-to-date results. The approach is demonstrated for two benchmarks: the first deals with 3D mesh compression algorithms and the second with 3D shape descriptors developed in the FAME2 and POPS projects of the System@tic competitiveness cluster. The advantages of such benchmarking approach were recognized recently by MPEG committee when deciding to adopt www.MyMultimédiaWorld.com as the standard evaluation tool for 3D mesh compression.

One of the amazing properties of human vision is its ability to feel the depth of the scenes being viewed. This is made possible by a process named stereopsis, which is the ability of our brain to fuse together the stereo image pair seen by two eyes. As a stereo image pair is a direct result of the same scene being viewed by a slightly different perspective they open up a new paradigm where spatial redundancy could be exploited for efficient transmission and storage of stereo image data. This thesis introduces three novel algorithms for stereo image compression. The first algorithm improves compression by exploiting the redundancies present in the so-called disparity field of a stereo image pair. The second algorithm uses a pioneering block coding strategy to simultaneously exploit the inter-frame and intra-frame redundancy of a stereo image pair, eliminating the need of coding the disparity field. The basic idea behind the development of the third algorithm is the efficient exploitation of redundancy in smoothly textured areas that are present in both frames, but are relatively displaced from each other due to binocular parallax. Extra compression gains of up to 20% have been achieved by the use of these techniques. The thesis also includes research work related to the improvement of the MPEG-4 video coding standard, which is the first audiovisual representation standard that understands a scene as a composition of audio-visual objects. A linear extrapolation based padding technique that makes use of the trend of pixel value variation often present near object boundaries, in padding the exterior pixels of the reference video object has been proposed. Coding gains of up to 7% have been achieved for coding boundary blocks of video objects. Finally a contour analysis based approach has been proposed for MPEG-4 video object extraction.

Digital image data requires large compression ratio in applications like internet, communication and audio-visual environment. In this thesis, we realize the MPEG-4 codec standard on the ARM9-based platform and improve the execution performance by efficient implementations of the core operations such as Motion Estimation and DCT. In the assembly codes obtained by directly compiling the C codes, there exists a lot of redundant checking which causes a large amount of execution time waste. We rewrite some of the compiled assembly codes to improve the execution efficiency using a variety of techniques such as loop-unrolling and data-type optimization. We also analyze the experimental results using several benchmark video sequences with different modes.

Increases in bandwidth and computational speed lead to growing interests in real-time audio and video communication over the Internet. With dramatic increase in wireless access recently, a challenging problem associated with audio and video communication lies in how to cope with packet loss and achieve acceptable video quality at the receiver and utilizing the limited wireless bandwidth efficiently. In this paper, we implement a system, Personal Mobile Communicator, to offer video and audio streaming communication. We employ MPEG-4 and GSM to compress video and audio data. MPEG-4 and GSM provide the standardized technological elements to compress video and audio data. MPEG-4 also takes a number of steps to enable robust transmission of compressed video data over noisy communication channels. We implement error resilience tools for reliable transmission and error concealment technologies to provide better video quality when error occurred. The goal of this paper, we design a communication system that is suitable for communication over wireless channel and offer a verification platform for further research.

In this paper, new intra and inter shape coding algorithms are proposed. The new algorithms are based on chain code. Chain code of an object's contour can be divided into several segments by the smooth contour characteristic. By this property, some techniques can be used for the proposed intra and inter shape coding algorithms. In intra mode, each segment is encoded by specific codes, and the decoding result is lossless. Compared with MPEG-4, M4R, DCC and chain code, the compression ratio is improved. Besides, a new coding scheme is proposed for the inter shape coding. It includes finding break points in a series of chain code, correlation between break points and fine scaling with a tolerant threshold between two similar chain code segments. By detecting the segments, break points can be found. The correlation is performed by computing the curvature difference between break points and contour points. The scaling is a technique for extending or shrinking a segment of chain code. Experimental results show that in the condition of high quality or low bit rate our proposed inter shape coding algorithm obtains better performance than MPEG-4 in compression.

L'émergence des contenus multimédias sur Internet, l'accès aux contenus multimédias et leurs enrichissements constituent un vaste domaine de recherche. Cette thèse s'inscrit dans ce contexte, et présente la réalisation complète et opérationnelle d'une plate-forme de diffusion multimédia interopérable et ouverte. Après avoir spécifié l'architecture de la plate-forme en introduisant le support de tous types de médias, l'indexation efficace, la recherche de contenus et leurs visualisations en ligne, la première contribution de cette thèse est une extension de la norme MPEG 7 permettant d'assurer la gestion des contenus graphiques 3D, ainsi que des informations liées à un système multimédia. Cette extension a permis le développement d'une plate-forme de diffusion gérant tous types de contenus, appelée MyMultimédiaWorld.com, entièrement normalisée à l'aide de MPEG 7 et MPEG 4. La deuxième contribution porte sur les facilités d'accès à la plate-forme multimédia. D'une part, nous avons développé une solution simple et originale d'API d'accès aux contenus multimédia par de applications tierces. D'autre part, nous proposons une solution basée sur le principe d'API pour intégrer dans une plate-forme des algorithmes multimédias. Cette solution permet la création de nouveaux services à partir d'algorithmes externes. A partir des deux APIs, nous proposons une nouvelle approche pour l'évaluation automatique d'algorithmes multimédias. Les aspects clés de cette approche sont l'évaluation en ligne, des conditions identiques pour l'exécution des algorithmes et la mise à jour automatique des résultats. L'approche développée est démontrée à l'aide de deux benchmarks différents, le premier pour l'évaluation des algorithmes de compression de maillage 3D et le second pour le benchmark des descripteurs de formes 3D développé dans le cadre des projets FAME2 et POPS du pôle de compétitivité System@tic. Les avantages de cette approche ont été reconnus récemment par le comité de normalisation MPEG avec sa décision d'adopter www.MyMultimédiaWorld.com pour l'évaluation des algorithmes de compression de maillage 3D.

This dissertation study describes and presents an alternative method for delivering digital video, the MPEG-4 compression format, through the use of an analog cable network for direct viewing on television sets. The purpose of the study is to propose this technology as an alternative to the present cable network technologies in Uruguay and elsewhere in South America. Delivery standards that might be used over such a CATV network include DVB-C (digital video broadcast for cable), and IP (internet protocol) networks. The study compares the current technologies to determine which would be the best way to provide such delivery over CATV networks. It is the argument of this study that the delivery of MPEG-4 format streaming video is no different than the delivery of any type of digital signal: in order for the signal to be delivered, it must pass through a transmission medium such as fiber-optic cable, twisted-wire pair, coaxial cable, etc. The dissertation makes the case that MPEG-4 is a feasible alternative technology which should be considered for new CATV applications in this region. This study is from a technical point of view, when it comes to implementation there are other elements that should be taken into account.

O trabalho apresentado nesta dissertação trata do desenvolvimento de um mecanismo para adaptação automática de ví?deo MPEG-4 ao vivo, de modo a atender as necessidades ou capacidades atuais de usuários e do sistema. Um dos desafios dessa área é capturar e representar as informações necessárias para realizar a adaptação. Assim, utilizando técnicas da área de computação ciente de contexto, foi desenvolvido um modelo extensível para representação de dispositivos. Também foram desenvolvidos métodos automáticos e semi-automáticos para capturar as informações necessárias. Neste trabalho foi adotado o modelo de recodificação de vídeo, o qual pode gerar atrasos que inviabilizam a adaptação de vídeo ao vivo em aplicações interativas. Assim, este trabalho realizou uma avaliação do impacto causado pela recodificação no atraso total, fim-a-fim, percebido pelo usuário. / This work presents the development of a mechanism to automatically adapt MPEG-4 live video, in a way to response the actual necessities or capacities of users or systems. One of the challanges in this area is to capture and represent the information needed to adapting content. Thus, using context aware computing techniques, an extensible model has been developed, which can be used to represent devices. It has also been developed automatic and semi-automatic methods to capture the needed information. In this work, the transcoding model has been adopted, which may generate latency, making difficult to use transcoding with interactive applications. In this way, this work has evaluated the impact caused by the transcoding when compared to the end-to-end total delay perceived by the user.

A esteganografia em vídeos digitais possibilita o ocultamento de um grande volume de informações quando comparada a técnicas em imagens. Contudo, esta tarefa não é trivial quando aplicada a vídeos comprimidos, pois a inserção de informações ocultas pode adicionar ruído dificultando a perfeita recuperação das mesmas durante a decodificação. Este trabalho apresenta uma técnica para esteganografia em vídeos comprimidos, denominada MP4Stego, a qual explora estruturas e tecnologias do padrão de vídeo MPEG-4 de modo a proceder recuperação de informações sem perda e apresentar maior capacidade de inserção de dados ocultos. Entre os benefícios da técnica estão: A capacidade de ocultamento de grande volume de dados; a capacidade de reprodução do vídeo contendo dados ocultos em players não especializados (ajudando a dar a ilusão de que se trata de um vídeo comum), sua imunidade, até o momento, as técnicas de esteganálise / Digital video steganography makes possible to hide higher volumes of information than the broadly used image steganography techniques. However, apply steganography to compressed digital videos is not a trivial task because the information hiding process may add noise to the original data. In this way, during the video decoding, the recovered hidden information is not an exact copy of the original data. This work presents a new steganographic technique, called MP4Stego, which explores new video structures of the MPEG-4 standard in order to recover hidden data without loss and in order to provide higher capacity of hidden data insertion. Some benefits of the MP4Stego technique are: to hide high volumes of data; to playback steganographyed videos by the means of non specialized players (this helps users to think that it is a regular video); so far, its immunity to stegoanalysis techniques