Video communication of British Sign Language (BSL) is important for remote interpersonal communication and for the equal provision of services for deaf people. However, the use of video telephony and video conferencing applications for BSL communication is limited by inadequate video quality. BSL is a highly structured, linguistically complete, natural language system that expresses vocabulary and grammar visually and spatially using a complex combination of facial expressions (such as eyebrow movements, eye blinks and mouth/lip shapes), hand gestures, body movements and finger-spelling that change in space and time. Accurate natural BSL communication places specific demands on visual media applications which must compress video image data for efficient transmission. Current video compression schemes apply methods to reduce statistical redundancy and perceptual irrelevance in video image data based on a general model of Human Visual System (HVS) sensitivities. This thesis presents novel video image coding methods developed to achieve the conflicting requirements for high image quality and efficient coding. Novel methods of prioritising visually important video image content for optimised video coding are developed to exploit the HVS spatial and temporal response mechanisms of BSL users (determined by Eye Movement Tracking) and the characteristics of BSL video image content. The methods implement an accurate model of HVS foveation, applied in the spatial and temporal domains, at the pre-processing stage of a current standard-based system (H.264). Comparison of the performance of the developed and standard coding systems, using methods of video quality evaluation developed for this thesis, demonstrates improved perceived quality at low bit rates. BSL users, broadcasters and service providers benefit from the perception of high quality video over a range of available transmission bandwidths. The research community benefits from a new approach to video coding optimisation and better understanding of the communication needs of deaf people.

With the progress of computer graphics and computer vision technologies, 3D/multiview video applications such as 3D-TV and tele-immersive conference become more and more popular and are very likely to emerge as a prime application in the near future. A successful 3D/multiview video system needs synergistic integration of various technologies such as 3D/multiview video acquisition, compression, transmission and rendering. In this thesis, we focus on addressing the challenges for multiview video compression. In particular, we have made 5 major contributions: (1) We propose a novel neighbor-based multiview video compression system which helps remove the inter-view redundancies among multiple video streams and improve the performance. An optimal stream encoding order algorithm is designed to enable the encoder to automatically decide the stream encoding order and find the best reference streams. (2) A novel multiview video transcoder is designed and implemented. The proposed multiview video transcoder can be used to encode multiple compressed video streams and reduce the cost of multiview video acquisition system. (3) A learning-based multiview video compression scheme is invented. The novel multiview video compression algorithms are built on the recent advances on semi-supervised learning algorithms and achieve compression by finding a sparse representation of images. (4) Two novel distributed source coding algorithms, EETG and SNS-SWC, are put forward. Both EETG and SNS-SWC are capable to achieve the whole Slepian-Wolf rate region and are syndrome-based schemes. EETG simplifies the code construction algorithm for distributed source coding schemes using extended Tanner graph and is able to handle mismatched bits at the encoder. SNS-SWC has two independent decoders and thus can simplify the decoding process. (5) We propose a novel distributed multiview video coding scheme which allows flexible rate allocation between two distributed multiview video encoders. SNS-SWC is used as the underlying Slepian-Wolf coding scheme. It is the first work to realize simultaneous Slepian-Wolf coding of stereo videos with the help of a distributed source code that achieves the whole Slepian-Wolf rate region. The proposed scheme has a better rate-distortion performance than the separate H.264 coding scheme in the high-rate case. / Computer Networks and Multimedia Systems

Modeling the motion that occurs between frames of a video sequence is a key component of video coding applications. Typically it is not possible to represent the motion between frames by a single model and therefore a quad-tree structure is employed where smaller, variable size regions or blocks are allowed to take on separate motion models. Quad-tree structures however suffer from two fundamental forms of redundancy. First, quad-trees exhibit structural redundancy due to their inability to exploit the dependence between neighboring leaf nodes with different parents. The second form of redundancy is due to the quad-tree structure itself being limited to capture only horizontal and vertical edge discontinuities at dyadically related locations; this means that general discontinuities in the motion field, such as those caused by boundaries of moving objects, become difficult and expensive to model. In our work, we address the issue of structural redundancy by introducing leaf merging. We describe how the intuitively appealing leaf merging step can be incorporated into quad-tree motion representations for a range motion modeling contexts. In particular, the impact of rate-distortion (R-D) optimized merging for two motion coding schemes, these being spatially predictive coding, as used by H.264, and hierarchical coding, are considered. Our experimental results demonstrate that the merging step can provide significant gains in R-D performance for both the hierarchical and spatial prediction schemes. Hierarchical coding has the advantage that it offers scalable access to the motion information; however due to the redundancy it introduces hierarchical coding has not been traditionally pursued. Our work shows that much of this redundancy can be mitigated with the introduction of merging. To enable scalable decoding, we employ a merging scheme which ensures that the dependencies introduced via merging can be hierarchically decoded. Theoretical investigations confirm the inherent advantages of leaf merging for quad-tree motion models. To enable quad-tree structures to better model motion discontinuity boundaries, we introduce geometry information to the quad-tree representation. We choose to model motion and geometry using separate quad-tree structures; thereby enabling each attribute to be refined separately. We extend the leaf merging paradigm to incorporate the dual tree structure allowing regions to be formed that have both motion and geometry attributes, subject to rate-distortion optimization considerations. We employ hierarchical coding for the motion and geometry information and ensure that the merging process retains the property of resolution scalability. Experimental results show that the R-D performance of the merged dual tree representation, is significantly better than conventional motion modeling schemes. Theoretical investigations show that if both motion and boundary geometry can be perfectly modeled, then the merged dual tree representation is able to achieve optimal R-D performance. We explore resolution scalability of merged quad-tree representations. We consider a modified Lagrangian cost function that takes into account the possibility of scalable decoding. Experimental results reveal that the new cost objective can considerably improve scalability performance without significant loss in overall efficiency and with competitive performance at all resolutions.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 33-34). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-62). Also available in electronic version.

Thesis (M.Eng.-Res.)--University of Wollongong, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 114-126.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Computer Science, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Theses (School of Computing Science) / Simon Fraser University.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-212). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-138).