1 EE 5359 Multimedia Signal Processing Project Proposal Title: H.264 to VP6 Transcoder Abstract VP6 is a video coding standard developed by On2 Technologies, Inc. It is the preferred codec for Macromedia Flash 8 video. VP6 assumes importance with Macromedia Flash emerging as a widely adopted video streaming technology over the internet. H.264 is currently one of the most widely accepted video coding standards in the industry. It enables high quality video at very low bitrates. So there is increasing importance of techniques which can convert video from H.264 to VP6 and thereby enable high quality video transmission over the internet using Flash. The current research shows H.263 video which is a previous generation standard of H.264 can be transcoded in VP6 and complexity can be reduced upto 50%. The similarities and dissimilarities between the two encoders are used to reduce the complexity using Dynamic Search Range and Dynamic Search Window. The success in reducing complexity in the H.263 to VP6 transcoder and available reference material related to transcoding algorithms between various video compression standards enables us to propose a new study to find an algorithm of transcoding H.264 coding standard to VP6 coding standard. It is proposed to explore the similarities and dissimilarities between the two standards to find out the right transcoding technique. Student: Jay R Padia Student Id: 1000 60 5145 E-mail: [email protected] Date: June 12, 20082 Importance of H.264 Coding Standard H.264 was proposed by the Joint Video Team (JVT) of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and ISO/IEC Moving Process Experts Group (MPEG) in 2003. It is currently one of the most widely accepted industry standards. It can provide good quality video at substantially lower bitrates compared to the previous standards. It also shows more error robustness [1] [2]. Emerging Importance of VP6 Coding Standard Flash Video is rapidly changing the landscape of video on the Web. It is emerging as the preferred solution for providing video services online over Windows Media Player, Apple Quicktime and Real Networks Real Player [3]. The advantages of Flash Player over its rivals are its small size and its completeness a website development package. Its ability to support multiple platforms is has made it popular [3]. Macromedia adopted the VP6 coding standard from On2 Technologies, Inc. as the video coding standard for its Flash player in 2005. It listed quality, portability, stability, low memory usage and performance as the main criteria for selecting VP6 [4]. It can be observed that significant quality improvement can be obtained with VP6 in Flash 8 over the Sorenson Spark codec (based on H.263) which was the basis of Flash MX video. It provides better performance with low contrast video images, removes color oversaturation and also provides a smoother picture true to the original by removing blockiness in the old format [5]. Since then VP6 is gaining importance as a coding standard. This creates the need to find a transcoding technique to convert video from H.264 video coding standard to VP6 video standard. Current Research On the basis of this, a pixel domain transcoding technique has been determined. The challenges were the large number of coding modes in VP6 over H.263, ¼ resolutions motion vectors (MV) and allowing multiple reference frames. A transcoding technique to convert from the previous generation H.263 standard to VP6 standard has been proposed [6]. The transcoder has been designed on the basis of the similarities and dissimilarities between the two standards. A table of comparison can be found. below.3 Proposed Research The current research as described and other available resources such as H.263 to H.264 transcoder [7], H.264 to MPEG2 transcoder [8] which was referred in the current research [6] and other video transcoders help us propose a new H.264 coding standard to VP6 standard transcoder. The similarities and dissimalarities in the two techniques will be studied. On the basis of the observations and from the available resources, a new technique can be proposed. REFERENCES: 1. Soon-kak Kwon, A. Tamhankar and K. R. Rao, “Overview of H.264 / MPEG – 4 Part 10”, J VCIR, vol 17, pp 186-216, April 2006 2. I. Richardson, V-Codex, “White Paper – An overview of H.264 Advanced Video Coding”, 2007 3. J. Emigh, “New Flash Player rises in the Web-Video Market” IEEE Computer 39, 14–16 (2006). 4. T. Uro, “The quest for a new video codec in Flash 8,” http://www.kaourantin.net/2005/08/quest-for-new-videocodec-in-flash-8.html, August 13, 2005. 5. On2 Technologies, Inc., “White Paper – On2 VP6 for Flash 8 Video”, http://www.On2.com, September 12, 2005. 6. C. Holder and H. Kalva, “H.263 to VP6 Video Transcoder”, SPIE, vol . 6822 (VCIP), San Jose , CA , Jan . 2008. 7. J. Bialkowski, A. Kaup and K. Illgner, “Overview of Low-Complexity Video Transcoding from H.263 to H.264,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME), pp. 49-52, 2006. 8. P. Kunzelmann and H. Kalva, “Reduced Complexity H.264 to MPEG-2 Transcoder,” Proceedings of the IEEE, International Conference on Consumer Electronics, Las Vegas, USA, January 10-14, 2007. 9. A. Vetro, C. Christopulos, and H. Sun, “Video transcoding architectures and techniques: An overview,” IEEE Signal Process. Mag., vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 18–29, Mar. 2003. 10. ITU-T Recommendation H.264 – Advanced Video Coding for Generic Audio-Visual services The presence of 1 MV and 4 MV support in both H.263 and VP6 allowed the use of MVs to some extent. However they cannot be used directly due to large number of MB modes in VP6. The complexity was reduced by restricting the evaluated MB modes on the basis of their simplicity and complexity. Also the use of Dynamic Search Range and Dynamic Search Window methods to find the MVs and the MB modes reduced complexity. The complexity of the proposed transcoder could be reduced by more than 50% without a significant loss in PSNR
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