Thesis (M.S.)--Tennessee Technological University, 2009. / Title from title page screen (viewed on June 29, 2010). Bibliography: leaves 68-70.

Thesis (M.E.)--University of Florida, 2003. / Title from title page of source document. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2006. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 3251. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as 1 leaf. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-71).

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-103). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2004&res%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss &rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR11755

Thesis. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-68)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-165). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Today video is being used in different facets supporting the e-learning experience. With a resurging interest and reduced barriers of entry to experience virtual and augmented reality applications, 360-degree video technology is becoming relevant as an option to produce and consume content for VR/AR applications. 360-degree video offers new features, which can prove useful in teaching & learning scenarios with a need for self directed control of view direction, immersion and a feeling of presence. Current adoptions of 360-degree videos are integrated manually for specialized activity-oriented learning scenarios. However, in order to adopt 360- degree video on a larger scale, a sufficient technical integration is required and knowledge of application scenarios needs to be communicated. To approach this challenge, workflow steps are analyzed, challenges are identified and scenarios are described in the context of creating 360- degree video content for higher education. We identify open gaps, which need to be addressed in order to integrate 360-degree video technology in an automated video processing tool chain.

[pt] Este trabalho teve por objetivo estudar algoritmos de estimação de movimento baseados na técnica de casamento de bloco a fim de avaliar a importância da sua escolha na construção de um codificador para uso em compressão de seqüência de imagens. Para isto foram estudados quatro algoritmos baseados na técnica de casamento de bloco, sendo verificada a interdependência existente entre os vários parâmetros que os compõem, tais como, tamanho da área de busca, critérios de medida de distorção entre blocos e tamanhos de blocos, em relação à qualidade da imagem reconstruída. / [en] This work was performed to study motion estimation algorithms based on block matching in order to evaluate the importance of the choice of the motion estimation algorithm in the Project of a image sequence compression coder. In order to do so, they were studied four motion estimation algorithms, and their performance were evaluated considering some parameters such as search region size, methods to measure the matching between blocks and block sizes, related to the quality of the reconstructed image.

A evolução das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC) favoreceu o crescimento do uso de variados meios na comunicação. Entre diversos meios, o vídeo em particular, necessita de uma grande banda para ser transmitido, ou de um grande espaço para ser armazenado. Uma análise dos diversos sinais de uma comunicação multimídia mostra, entretanto, que existe uma grande redundância de informação. Utilizando técnicas de compressão é possível reduzir de uma a duas ordens de grandeza a quantidade de informação veiculada, mantendo uma qualidade satisfatória. Uma das formas de compressão busca a relação de similaridade entre os quadros vizinhos de uma cena, identificando a redundância temporal existente entre as imagens. Essa técnica chama-se estimação de movimento, este processo é muito eficaz, mas o custo computacional é elevado, exigindo a implementação de algoritmos eficientes em hardware, para o caso de compressão em tempo real de vídeos de alta resolução. Esta dissertação apresenta uma investigação sobre algoritmos de estimação de movimento visando implementações em hardware. Todos os algoritmos foram desenvolvidos primeiramente em linguagem C e submetidos a diversos testes para avaliação de desempenho e custo computacional. Os algoritmos foram aplicados a diversas amostras de vídeo utilizadas pela comunidade científica, para avaliação em aplicações reais. As avaliações demonstraram que os algoritmos rápidos conseguem realizar o processo de estimação de movimento de maneira eficiente, obtendo bons resultados em termos de qualidade de vetores, esforço computacional e desempenho. Com as análises dos resultados obtidos, o algoritmo Busca Diamante (Diamond Search) foi escolhido para ser implementado em hardware, com dois níveis diferentes de subamostragem de pixel: 2:1 e 4:1. As arquiteturas para o algoritmo Busca Diamante, com sub-amostragem de pixel de 2:1 e 4:1, foram descritas em VHDL, sintetizadas para FPGAs Virtex-4 da Xilinx e também para standard cells na tecnologia TSMC 0,18μm. Os resultados mostram que as arquiteturas desenvolvidas possuem desempenho superior ao necessário para tratar vídeos HDTV 1080p em tempo real a 30 quadros por segundo. As arquiteturas desenvolvidas também apresentam um baixo consumo de recursos de hardware, após a síntese para FPGA e ASIC. / The evolution of the communication and information technologies push the development of several communication media. These media, video in particular, need a large bandwidth to be transmitted, or a large digital storage capacity. Many multimedia signals show, however, a high information redundancy. By using compression techniques it is possible to reduce the amount of coded information by one or two orders of magnitude, keeping a satisfactory visual quality. One of these compression techniques searches the similarity between neighboring frames of a scene, identifying the temporal redundancy between them. This technique is called motion estimation, and it is a very efficient method for compression. However, the computational complexity of the motion estimation requires high performance algorithms in hardware, when used for real time compression of high resolution videos. This dissertation presents a comprehensive investigation about motion estimation algorithms, targeting a hardware implementation. All the investigated algorithms were first developed in C language and submitted to many evaluation tests. The algorithms were applied to ten video samples used by the scientific community for the evaluation of real application. The evaluation showed that fast algorithms can carry out the motion estimation process efficiently, producing good results in vectors quality, computational effort and performance. With the results analyses, the Diamond Search algorithm was chosen to be hardware designed, with two different levels of pixel subsampling, 2:1 and 4:1. The architectures for Diamond Search algorithm, with pixel subsampling of 2:1 and 4:1, were described in VHDL, synthesized to Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGAs and also to standard cells TSMC 0.18μm technology. The developed architectures have sufficient performance to process HDTV 1080p videos at 30 frames per second and demand small hardware resources consumption after synthesis to FPGA and ASIC. Keywords: Video compression, motion estimation, VLSI design.

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of various approaches to training equestrian skills. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to compare an instructional video(s), in combination with verbal instruction, to verbal instruction alone on the percentage of horseback riding and safety errors made among beginner trail riders. An analysis of the overall percentage of steps completed independently revealed significant differences between instructional conditions that favored the use of video. Experiment 2 involved more experienced riders and more sophisticated equitation skills. Specifically, it examined whether a training package would decrease the percentage of jumping equitation errors among riders training in the sport of eventing. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, a training package was evaluated which entailed written feedback and video footage of the lesson from the trainer's point of view in addition to standard instruction. The findings of this study are inconclusive. The overall performance of riders through a six jump course was highly variable from week to week, regardless of the type of instruction utilized during lessons. Although several jumping equitation skills were never problematic for riders, no other skills routinely improved. Limitations and future studies are discussed.