ENEL 885BL Advanced Multimedia Communications

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ENEL 885BLAdvanced Multimedia Communications

• Dr. Nima Sarshar
• University of Regina

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Outline

• What is multimedia?
• What is multimedia communication?
• What are the challenges and goals?
• What are the economics?
• Course organization
• Project and other fun stuff!

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What is multimedia (MM)?

• MM is a filed dealing with any collection of
• Text
• Sounds
• Audio
• Speech
• Video
• Animation
• Etc. (can you name any other?)

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MM Processing

• MM contents are signals, after all
• MM processing ? signal processing
• A signal processing expert considers MM as just
  another form of signals
• Usual processing
• Denoising
• Transforms, Fourier transforms, etc
• etc

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What is Multimedia Communication

• A MM communication system is a system to
  communication MM contents from A to B
• There are 4 parties involved
• The MM content itself
• The transmitter (sender, server, )
• The communication channel
• The receiver (client, sink, )
• Can be one way (broadcast) or two way
  (teleconferencing, video conferencing)

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MM Comm. Systems
Channel
Receiver
Transmitter
Channel
Tranceiver
Tranceiver
Tranceiver
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Applications

• Arguably, the hottest sector of IT market
• Hot examples
• TV on cell phone you can now watch live TV on
  your cell phone
• YouTube where thousands of people can stream
  uploaded video in seconds
• ...

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Applications

• Streaming
• On-Demand
• Proprietary services (MAX from SaskTel)
• Broadcasting
• IPTV
• Online digital broadcasts radio, TV stations
• Telecomm
• VoIP, Teleconferencing, videoconferencing
• Multiuser games

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Classification of MM Comm. Apps

• By Timing
• Real-time streaming media
• Live online radio, teleconference, IPTV
• Off-line compression off-line (YouTube)
• Download and play
• Compression is off-line, download a clip and then
  play it
• Totally offline
• Buy a DVD and play it!

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Classification of MM Comm. Apps.

• By number of users
• Unicast
• Video On Demand the stream is specifically sent
  for you. You can pause or rewind the show
• Broadcast and Multicast
• One content sent to more than one receivers
• Online radios, wireless broadcasts, etc

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Classification of MM Comm. Apps.

• By communication medium
• Network MM
• Uses a network, mostly Internet, for
  communication
• Wireless MM
• Uses wireless communication
• Hybrid MM
• Uses a network backbone and may use wireless for
  last-hop delivery

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Step1 Content capture

• MM contents need to be
• captured
• processed quality enhancement, etc
• digitized
• compressed

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Step 2 Transmit

• Compressed content should be sent over the
  channel
• The channel can be a network (e.g., the
  Internet), a wireless link for wireless MM, etc
• Channels usually induce errors data bits are
  usually protected with channel codes
• Whole error correction schemes

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Step 3 Deliver

• Use a channel, or a communication medium to
  deliver information bits to the receiver
• The channel might be the Internet, a wireless
  link, or a combination of both

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Step 4 Receive

• Channel might induce errors.
• The receiver should correct the errors
• Then do decompression to get the raw content
• The receiver then sends the raw content to be
  rendered

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Step 4 Render

• Play the content
• Usually requires conversion of digital content to
  analogue form
• Displays
• digital displays (LCD)
• Analogue displays (TV, etc)
• Playing sound

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To summarize

• Capture and digitize content
• Compress content (source coding)
• Protect and format the compressed content, and
  make it ready for transmission over the channel
• At the receiver, recover the errors if possible
• Then decompress to get the raw content
• Render the content

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Course Outline

• We will talk about all these problems in this
  course
• Most of our time (4 weeks) will be spent on
  capturing and compressing different contents
  audio, still image and video
• We then get to communication (2 weeks) network
  communication, wireless communication,
  error-correction coding

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Contd

• We then get to error reconciliation and recovery
  and rendering (1 week)
• and then spend one week to review multimedia
  compression and communication standards

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Course Outline

• My website
• http//uregina.ca/sarsharn/
• The course website will be online in a day or
  so. We will have all the anounecements on there
  and through email.

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Course Textbook

• Y. Wang, J. Ostermann, and Y.Q.Zhang, "Video
  Processing and Communications," 1st ed., Prentice
  Hall, 2002. ISBN 0130175471.
• We will use the following book too
• Khalid Sayood, "Introduction to Data
  Compression," 2nd ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 2000. 

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Marking

• Project 50
• Homework 30
• Final 20
• Project proposal deadline Monday June 4th