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Shape representation and coding of visual objets in multimedia applications — An overview

Revue des MÉthodes de ReprÉsentation et de Codage de Formes D’objets Visuels dans les Applications MultimÉdia

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Abstract

Emerging multimedia applications have created the need for new functionalities in digital communications. Whereas existing compression standards only deal with the audio-visual scene at a frame level, it is now necessary to handle individual objects separately, thus allowing scalable transmission as well as interactive scene recomposition by the receiver. The future MPEG-4 standard aims at providing compression tools addressing these functionalities. Unlike existing frame-based standards, the corresponding coding schemes need to encode shape information explicitly. This paper reviews existing solutions to the problem of shape representation and coding. Region and contour coding techniques are presented and their performance is discussed, considering coding efficiency and rate-distortion control capability, as well as flexibility to application requirements such as progressive transmission, low-delay coding, and error robustness.

Résumé

Les besoins en matière de fonctionalité orientées objet dans les communications audioviduelles sont apparus récemment avec l’émergence d’application nouvelles telles que la video conférence, les vidéophones et la vidéo interactive. Alors que les normes de compression existantes traitent la scène audio-visuelle au niveau de la trame, il est maintenant nécessaire de traiter séparément les différents objet présents, permettant ainsi une transmission échelonnable aussi bien que la recomposition de la scène par le receveur. La future norme MPEG-4 a pour but de proposer des outils de compression offrant ces nouvelles fonctionalités. Contrairement aux standards orientés trame existants, les schémas de codage correspondants doivent intégrer l’information de forme. Cet article présente un certain nombre de solutions existantes au problème de la représentation et du codage des formes. Différentes techniques de codage deformes et de contours sont présentées et leurs performances sont analysées en considérant l’efficacité du codage et la capacité de régulation débit/distortion, ainsi que la flexibilité vis-à-vis des besoins de l’application, tels que la transmission progressive, le codage à court délai, et la résistance aux erreurs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Signal Processing Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne - EPFL, CH-1015, Lausanne, Suisse

    Corinne Le Buhan Jordan, Sushil Bhattacharjee, Frank Bossen, Frédéric Jordan & Touradj Ebrahimi

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  1. Corinne Le Buhan Jordan
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  2. Sushil Bhattacharjee
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  3. Frank Bossen
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  4. Frédéric Jordan
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  5. Touradj Ebrahimi
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Jordan, C.L.B., Bhattacharjee, S., Bossen, F. et al. Shape representation and coding of visual objets in multimedia applications — An overview. Ann. Télécommun. 53, 164–178 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02997675

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