Bing J. Sheu

Multimedia Technology for Applications

From the Publisher: nThis single, expertly-written volume brings you in-depth, interdisciplinary coverage of todays state-of-the-art multimedia technology--the combined work of more than 20 leaders in the field. With an emphasis on consumer electronics, the contributing authors to MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGY FOR APPLICATIONS present the very latest advances in signal processing, communications and networking, computer databases, and circuits and systems as they relate to multimedia technology and applications. Topics covered include: multimedia systems; standards, and trends; submicro electronic enabling technologies; digital library servers; networking; multimedia signal processing and applications.MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGY FOR APPLICATIONS is thoughtfully structured and complete with numerous figures and examples, making it of key interest to advanced student engineers and managers in industry, as well as professional engineers in need of a current, practical resource.Sponsored by:IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council/Society.

ContentBased Image RetrievalResearch Issues 1995, NEC Research Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

This chapter surveys the research problems and directions in the field of image retrieval by content-based query. The central problem is to find high-speed methods for finding which images within a large collection best match a given image template. To be of practical use, a solution should be able to do detailed analyses at a rate of about 1000 images per second, which, when coupled with descriptor-based search techniques to select candidates for analysis, will enable effective search of libraries containing millions of images. An attractive approach is to perform the search on compressed versions of the images. Reduction in data volume reduces I/O time, and should reduce processing time as well. Fourier-domain compression and wavelet compression are the major directions for this research. The advantage of Fourier-domain compression is that it provides an efficient computational means to determine which position within an image best matches a specified pattern. However, the cost of performing Fourier transforms is a computational bottleneck, forcing researchers to consider other alternatives that may yield faster searches. Wavelet compression has the advantage that correlation peaks can be detected in the wavelet domain, thus eliminating the need to invert the wavelet transform. But searching within a wavelet transform is more costly than in a Fourier domain. One might obtain the best of both transforms by combining Fourier transforms with wavelet functions. For both wavelet and Fourier-domain computations, architectural support can reduce access-time delays to near zero on critical paths within the memory hierarchy because all of the accesses are known in advance. Memory-access time is the main source of performance degradation in the memory hierarchy. It may be possible to use the knowledge of future reference patterns to schedule dat a movement at various levels of the memory hierarchy in order to reduce the access time delay to zero for the critical accesses. Ideally, image streams will arrive at an arithmetic unit just in time to be processed, and the results will be returned to an external disk (or other form of memory) just as the write head reaches the region where the data are to be written. The gains from both architectural support and processing of compressed images may yield the performance improvement required to meet our goal.

Intelligent Speech/Audio Processing for Multimedia Applications

Intelligent speech and audio processing can provide efficient and smart interfaces for various multimedia applications. Generally, speech is the most natural form of human communication. Audio and music can enhance our emotional impacts and promote interest in multimedia applications. A successful interactive multimedia system must have the capabilities of speech and audio compression, text-to-speech conversion, speech understanding, and music synthesis. The main purpose of speech and audio compression is to provide cost-effective storage or to minimize transmission costs. Text-to-speech converts linguistic information stored as data or text into speech for the applications of talking terminals, alarm systems, and audiotext services. Speech understanding systems make it possible for people to interact with computers using human speech. Its success relies on the integration of a wide variety of speech technologies, including acoustic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analyses. The applications of music processing for multimedia were mostly realized by means of the combination of music, graphics, video, and other media. Since musical sounds and compositions can be precisely specified and controlled by a computer, we can easily create artificial orchestras, performers, and composers. Nowadays, multimedia systems have become more sophisticated with the advances made in computer and microelectronic technologies. Many applications require efficient processing of speech and audio for interactive presentations and integration with other types of media. The application-specific hardwares are proposed to meet the high-speed, low-cost, lightweight, and low-power requirements. The design example of a speech recognition processor and system for voice-control applications is introduced. The industrial standards and commercial products of speech and audio processing ar e also summarized in this chapter.

Data Storage and Retrieval in DiskArrayBased Video Servers

In response to the emergence of various multimedia applications, a significant amount of research effort has recently been expended on ways to deal with video data storage and retrieval in disk-array-based video servers. In this chapter, we examine various issues on video storage and retrieval in disk arrays. The issue of video replication in disk arrays is first discussed. Next we describe some prior studies on disk scheduling and examine methods to minimize the buffer requirement of the video server. The issue of storing scalable videos is then investigated. Finally, methods to support interactive viewing functions, such as pause/resume and fast browsing operations, for a disk-array-based video server are considered. An alternative model to support video viewing by video downloading is also discussed.