ATHENA Christian Doppler (CD) Laboratory

Fast multi-rate encoding for adaptive HTTP streaming

US Patent

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Hadi Amirpour (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Ekrem Çetynkaya (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), and Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)

Abstract: According to embodiments of the disclosure, information of higher and lower quality encoded video segments is used to limit Rate-Distortion Optimization (RDO) for each Coding Unit Tree (CTU). A method first encodes the highest bit-rate segment and consequently uses it to encode the lowest bit-rate video segment. Block structure and selected reference frame of both highest and lowest bit-rate video segments are used to predict and shorten RDO process for each CTU in middle bit-rates. The method delays just one frame using parallel processing. This approach provides time-complexity reduction compared to the reference software for middle bit-rates while degradation is negligible.

Another Valentine’s day, another gift from ATHENA! We are delighted to share Video Complexity Analyzer (VCA) version 2.0. The new release brings add-on benefits over our previous release, v1.5, like supporting analysis of High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos. The version is faster, courtesy of the low-pass DCT optimizations. We expect this release of VCA facilitates research on content-adaptive encoding, video quality assessment, and other research topics more than ever.

A command-line executable is provided to facilitate testing and development. VCA is available as an open-source library published under the GPLv3 license. For more details, please visit the online software documentation here. The source code can be found here.

Heatmap depiction of the luma texture information features extracted from the second frame of Cover- Song_1080P_0a86 video of Youtube UGC Dataset.

On February 8, 2023, EduDay – organised by the educational lab and students of the HAK 1 Klagenfurt – took place for the first time. Several hundred students were guided through the laboratories and got their first insight into research. CD laboratory ATHENA participated as well and presented background and results from the world of video streaming to the interested participants.

Find more info here.

2023 NAB Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology (BEIT) Conference

April 15-19, 2023 | Las Vegas, US

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Vignesh V Menon (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt),  Prajit T Rajendran (Universite Paris-Saclay), Christian Feldmann (Bitmovin, Klagenfurt), Martin Smole (Bitmovin, Klagenfurt), Klaus Schoeffmann (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Mohammad Ghanbari (School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, UK), and Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt).

Abstract:

Currently, a fixed set of bitrate-resolution pairs termed bitrate ladder is used in live streaming applications. Similarly, two-pass variable bitrate (VBR) encoding schemes are not used in live streaming applications to avoid the additional latency added by the first-pass. Bitrate ladder optimization is necessary to (i) decrease storage or delivery costs or/and (ii) increase Quality of Experience (QoE). Using two-pass VBR encoding improves compression efficiency, owing to better encoding decisions in the second-pass encoding using the first-pass analysis. In this light, this paper introduces a perceptually-aware constrained Variable Bitrate (cVBR) encoding Scheme (Live VBR) for HTTP adaptive streaming applications, which includes a joint optimization of the perceptual redundancy between the representations of the bitrate ladder, maximizing the perceptual quality (in terms of VMAF) and optimized constant rate factor (CRF). Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT)-energy-based low-complexity spatial and temporal features for every video segment, namely, brightness, spatial texture information, and temporal activity, are extracted to predict perceptually-aware bitrate ladder for encoding. Experimental results show that, on average, Live VBR yields bitrate savings of 7.21% and 13.03% to maintain the same PSNR and VMAF, respectively, compared to the reference HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) bitrate ladder Constant Bitrate (CBR) encoding using x264 AVC encoder without any noticeable additional latency in streaming, accompanied by a 52.59% cumulative decrease in storage space for various representations, and a 28.78% cumulative decrease in energy consumption, considering a perceptual difference of 6 VMAF points.

The encoding pipeline using Live VBR envisioned in this paper.

IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)

28 May – 01 June 2023– Rome, Italy

[PDF][Slides]

Reza Farahani (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt),  Abdelhak Bentaleb (Concordia University, Canada), Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Mohammad Shojafar (University of Surrey, UK), Radu Prodan (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), and Hermann Hellwagner (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt).

Abstract: 5G and 6G networks are expected to support various novel emerging adaptive video streaming services (e.g., live, VoD, immersive media, and online gaming) with versatile Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements such as high bitrate, low latency, and sufficient reliability. It is widely agreed that these requirements can be satisfied by adopting emerging networking paradigms like Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and edge computing. Previous studies have leveraged these paradigms to present network-assisted video streaming frameworks, but mostly in isolation without devising chains of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) that consider the QoE requirements of various types of Multimedia Services (MS).

To bridge the aforementioned gaps, we first introduce a set of multimedia VNFs at the edge of an SDN-enabled network, form diverse Service Function Chains (SFCs) based on the QoE requirements of different MS services. We then propose SARENA, an SFC-enabled ArchitectuRe for adaptive VidEo StreamiNg Applications. Next, we formulate the problem as a central scheduling optimization model executed at the SDN controller. We also present a lightweight heuristic solution consisting of two phases that run on the SDN controller and edge servers to alleviate the time complexity of the optimization model in
large-scale scenarios. Finally, we design a large-scale cloud-based testbed, including 250 HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) players requesting two popular MS applications (i.e., live and VoD), conduct various experiments, and compare its effectiveness with baseline systems. Experimental results illustrate that SARENA outperforms baseline schemes in terms of users’ QoE by at least 39.6%, latency by 29.3%, and network utilization by 30% in both MS services.

Index Terms—HAS; DASH; NFV; SFC; SDN, Edge Computing.

Journal of Network and Computer Applications

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Samira Afzal (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Vanessa Testoni (unico IDtech), Christian Esteve Rothenberg (University of Campinas), Prakash Kolan (Samsung Research America), and Imed Bouazizi (Qualcomm)

Abstract:

Demand for wireless video streaming services increases with users expecting to access high-quality video streaming experiences. Ensuring Quality of Experience (QoE) is quite challenging due to varying bandwidth and time constraints. Since most of today’s mobile devices are equipped with multiple network interfaces, one promising approach is to benefit from multipath communications. Multipathing leads to higher aggregate bandwidth and distributing video traffic over multiple network paths improves stability, seamless connectivity, and QoE. However, most of current transport protocols do not match the requirements of video streaming applications or are not designed to address relevant issues, such as networks heterogeneity, head-of-line blocking, and delay constraints. In this comprehensive survey, we first review video streaming standards
and technology developments. We then discuss the benefits and challenges of multipath video transmission over wireless. We provide a holistic literature review of multipath wireless video streaming, shedding light on the different alternatives from an end-to-end layered stack perspective, reviewing key multipath wireless scheduling functions, unveiling trade-offs of each approach, and presenting a suitable taxonomy to classify the
state-of-the-art. Finally, we discuss open issues and avenues for future work.