Abstract: The present invention provides a QoE (Quality of Experience) management solution, wherein QoE feedback is used to optimize the usage of QoS provisioning techniques, thus improving the utilization efficiency of network resources. According to one aspect of the invention, a method for QoE management for a network service provided to a user device, the method comprising: displaying a user interface on the user device for a user to input an expected QoE value of the network service; receiving the expected QoE value of the network service from the user; evaluating an objective QoE value of the network service as a function of network QoS parameters; and adjusting the QoS parameters of the network service if the objective QoE value is less than the expected QoE value.

Abstract: Blur is one of the most important features related to video quality. Accurate estimating the blur level of a video is a great help to accurately evaluate the video quality. An improved method is provided for estimating the blur level of videos that are compressed by a block based codec, such as H.264/AVC, MPEG2, etc. According to the invention, local blur detection is based on macroblock (MB) edges, a content dependent weighting scheme is employed to decrease the influence from texture and when detecting local blur, the spreading of detection will stop at local minimum and maximum luminance positions.

Abstract: As to enhance the rendering while minimizing needed computation time, the method comprises the steps of determining noise information, said noise information being representative of noise level estimated for at least a part of said image; the noise information being determined for the achromatic component of the image; sampling said part of the image according to said noise information; and rendering said at least a part of the image according to said sampling.

Abstract: A method for encoding vertex orientations, also known as normal components, of a 3D mesh model comprises a first clustering of the normal components, determining for each of the first clusters a sphere sector to which most of its elements belong, mapping normal components to a predefined sector, re-clustering the normal components in the predefined sector into second clusters, determining predictors for the second clusters and encoding a normal component by its residual, a reference to its predictor and data indicating which of said mirror mapping operations were performed. A sphere sector is obtained by dividing a sphere into m equal spherical segments and dividing each of said spherical segments into n equal sectors. The first clustering for the sector mapping and the second clustering for predictive coding result in an improved compression ratio.

Abstract: High-fidelity video coding nowadays tends to adopt the RGB coding for directly reducing RGB inter-color redundancy without color space conversion. A known method uses a blockbased inter-color compensation algorithm for removing inter-color redundancy on RGB color planes by defining the correlation between color planes within each coding block as a linear model of slope and offset parameters, codes the base plane block and then predicts the other two color blocks from the base plane block. However, for most coding blocks the texture within a component block varies quite much. A new method for improved video coding uses adaptive segmentation of the base color component block, corresponding segmentation of the other color component blocks and individual slope and offset parameters for predicting each segment.

Abstract: An algorithm for efficiently compressing floating-point data in 3D meshes is disclosed. 3D meshes are represented by topology data, geometry data and property data. Geometry data specify vertex locations and are usually represented by floating-point coordinates. While geometry data are usually compressed by quantization, prediction and entropy coding, the present invention uses no prediction. A floating-point number consists of mantissa and exponent, and normally the exponent, sign and mantissa are compressed separately. A method for encoding floating-point formatted data comprises determining if a current floating-point value was previously stored in a memory, storing the current value in the memory if it was not previously stored in the memory, and encoding it. Otherwise, if the current floating-point value was previously stored in a memory, the storage position of the value within the memory is determined and a reference pointing to the storage position is encoded.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for measuring the quality of a video is provided. The method comprises: generating a frame loss pattern of the video by indicating whether each frame in the video is lost or successfully transmitted; and evaluating the quality of the video as a function of the generated t came loss pattern.

Abstract: A method and an apparatus for image filtering are described. Structural information is employed during the calculation of filtering coefficients. The structural information is described by the regions defined through an edge map of the image. In one embodiment, the region correlation between the target pixel and a contributing pixel is selected as a structural filtering coefficient. The region correlation, which indicates the possibility of two pixels being in the same regions, is calculated by evaluating the strongest edge cut by a path between the target pixel and a contributing pixel. The structural filtering coefficient is further combined with spatial information and intensity information to form a spatial-intensity-region (SIR) filter. The structural information based filter is applicable to applications such as denoising, tone mapping, and exposure fusion.

Abstract: For most large 3D engineering models, the instance positions of repeating instances of connected components show significant multiple spatial aggregation. The invention uses several KD-trees, each for one cluster of points which are spatially aggregated. The multiple KD-trees generate a relatively short data stream, and thus improve the total compression ratio. A method for encoding points of a 3D mesh model comprises steps of determining that the mesh model comprises repeating instances of a connected component, and determining for each repeating instance at least one reference point, clustering the reference points of the repeating instances into one or more clusters, and encoding the clustered reference points using KD-tree coding, wherein for each cluster a separate KD-tree is generated.

Abstract: Accurately estimating the image quality of video is still difficult, especially when there is no reference video available. A method for determining a quality measure for a video image comprises selecting a measuring point, such as a MB, determining a context area around the measuring point, calculating a variance of pixel values in the context area, calculating a variance of pixel values in the measuring point, calculating a relation between the two variances of pixel values, and averaging said relations for a plurality of measuring points, wherein a quality measure for a video image is obtained.

Abstract: The invention is related to prediction of a lost or damaged block of an enhanced spatial layer frame. A method for predicting a lost or damaged block of an enhanced spatial layer frame comprises the steps of determining an adjuvant frame in the enhanced spatial layer by help of reference information from a lower spatial layer frame corresponding said enhanced spatial layer frame, generating an information reduced block by help of said adjuvant frame and predicting the lost or damaged block by help of the information reduced block. The reference information of the corresponding lower spatial layer frame can be decoded independently from any lower spatial layer reference frame and the adjuvant enhanced spatial layer frame is already decoded. Thus, the computational effort is reduced. By generation of the information reduced block the prediction is made smoother which makes it less vivid and therefore less salient to a user.

Abstract: De-noising an image by Anisotropic Gradient Regulation commences by first choosing edge directions for the image. Thereafter, an anisotropic gradient norm is established for the image from anisotropic gradient norms along the selected edge directions. The image pixels undergo adjustment to minimize the anisotropic gradient norm for the image, thereby removing image noise.

Abstract: The invention is related to encoding an image block of an image using a partitioned block transform. The inventors recognized that applying a texture-pattern associated invertible mapping to the pixels of a first partition, said first partition resulting from partitioning said image block according to a current texture pattern with which said texture-pattern associated invertible mapping is associated, allows for limiting the maximum number of required first 1-D transforms to not exceeding a number of columns in the image block as well as limiting the maximum number of required second 1-D transforms to not exceeding a number of rows in the image block, also. Achieving limitation of maximum required 1-D transforms enables more efficient implementation on hardware and improves encoding performance but also allows for further partitions according to texture patterns which comprise at least one of multiple strips, texture patterns with highly unsymmetrical pixel distribution and non-directional texture patterns.

Abstract: A method and an apparatus for image filtering are described. Structural information is employed during the calculation of filtering coefficients. The structural information is described by the regions defined through an edge map of the image. In one embodiment, the region correlation between the target pixel and a contributing pixel is selected as a structural filtering coefficient. The region correlation, which indicates the possibility of two pixels being in the same regions, is calculated by evaluating the strongest edge cut by a path between the target pixel and a contributing pixel. The structural filtering coefficient is further combined with spatial information and intensity information to form a spatial-intensity-region (SIR) filter. The structural information based filter is applicable to applications such as denoising, tone mapping, and exposure fusion.

Abstract: 3D models of the engineering class usually have a large number of connected components, with small numbers of large triangles, often with arbitrary connectivity. To enable compact storage and fast transmission of large 3D mesh models, an efficient compression strategy specially designed for 3D mesh models is provide. A method for encoding a 3D mesh model comprises determining and clustering repeating components, normalizing the components, wherein scaling factors are clustered and orientation axes are clustered, encoding the connected components using references to the clusters, and entropy encoding the connected components.

Abstract: An adaptive video presentation method for automatically presenting a video with stream-embed information based on content analysis of the video on a smaller display with a limited screen size is provided. The method comprises steps of determining a salient object group containing at least one salient object based on perceptual interest value of macroblocks for each frame of said video, extracting a window having a minimum size containing the salient object group for a scene of the video, characterized in that it further comprises steps of comparing size of the extracted window with the smaller display size; and presenting at least a selected area of the extracted window containing at least a part of the salient object group for the scene on the smaller display in different operation modes based on the result of the comparison steps for different motion mode for the scene of the video.

Abstract: When for video coding Intra refresh is used, which inserts Intra coded blocks into previously Inter coded pictures, an efficiently adapted rate control method is required for error resilient video coding. A method for adaptively determining a bit budget for encoding video pictures comprises pre-analyzing each of the pictures of a group of pictures, wherein a relative complexity index is calculated for each picture, allocating bits to the pictures based on their relative complexity index and encoding each of the pictures with the allocated number of bits. The pre-analysis comprises selecting pictures for Intra refresh coding, extracting attention area information from the selected pictures, encoding at least the macroblocks of the attention area using Intra mode, calculating for each picture a complexity index, and calculating from the complexity indices of the pictures of the group a relative complexity index for each picture. Thus, a subjectively better video quality is achieved.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for measuring the quality of a video is provided. The method comprises: generating a frame loss pattern of the video by indicating whether each frame in the video is lost or successfully transmitted; and evaluating the quality of the video as a function of the generated t came loss pattern.

Abstract: The present invention provides a QoE (Quality of Experience) management solution, wherein QoE feedback is used to optimize the usage of QoS provisioning techniques, thus improving the utilization efficiency of network resources. According to one aspect of the invention, a method for QoE management for a network service provided to a user device, the method comprising: displaying a user interface on the user device for a user to input an expected QoE value of the network service; receiving the expected QoE value of the network service from the user; evaluating an objective QoE value of the network service as a function of network QoS parameters; and adjusting the QoS parameters of the network service if the objective QoE value is less than the expected QoE value.

Abstract: A method for compressing a symbol sequence, wherein each symbol may have one out of three or more possible symbol values, said method comprises the steps of modifying the symbol sequence by replacing each run pair, which contains a first run of symbols of a most frequent symbol value and a second run of symbols of a second most frequent symbol value, by a further symbol value not comprised in the three or more possible symbol values, generating a binary sequence comprising all replaced run pairs and compression encoding the binary sequence and the modified symbol sequence.