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Project Description

Scalable Video Coding (SVC), most importantly the recent Scalable Extensions of the highly successful ITU H.264 / ISO/IEC MPEG-4 AVC video codec standard, is a promising technology to solve one of the fundamental problems of providing TV and VoD services over the Internet: the diversity of networks and devices, by means of which these services will be offered and consumed. SVC basically allows easy retrieval of different qualities (and bitrates) of a given media content by simple extraction or truncation of certain segments from a single, highest quality content bitstream. Thus, it is believed that SVC represents the missing key factor to enable high quality delivery of on-demand and live content over the Internet, independent from the used end device and the speed of the Internet connection.

RiS, the industry partner in this proposal, is providing both on-demand and live TV services over the Internet via their myTV platform, which faces the problems of all IPTV architectures when serving diverse clients over diverse networks, as described above. Klagenfurt University, the research partner, has significant research results and several software prototypes on SVC streaming and adaptation and has performed multimedia communication and adaptation projects for several years both on a basic research level (FWF projects) and on an applied research level (EU projects). Based on these grounds, the IPTV platform and requirements of the industry partner and the SVC-related streaming and adaptation expertise of the research partner, this project is proposed to pursue the following goals:
  1. The main objective is to develop an innovative solution to the above IPTV problem, i.e., to design, implement, and evaluate an SVC-based IPTV architecture which eliminates or at least reduces the problems of the current IPTV architecture of RiS and to integrate the solution into their platform. This will enable users to consume the media contents at the best possible quality regardless of their specific network and device.
  2. A second objective is to realize a specific application of SVC-enabled media consumption, namely a session mobility scenario, where a specific media session is transferred from one end device to another, e.g., in a home scenario where a set top box performs adaptation of the migrated video stream to the new usage context (e.g., device).
  3. The final objective is to identify and explore further novel application scenarios and uses of "adaptive media distribution" based on SVC. Realizing such applications will be beyond the scope of this project, but will open new directions for research and/or product developments for the partners.

The work performed in this project is part of a European project of the Celtic Initiative called SCALNET (Scalable Video Coding Impact on Networks). SCALNET was approved by Celtic and received the Celtic Label for Call 5. The approval of the SCALNET project shows that it is relevant to the Celtic Initiative, which is supported by most of the major European players in communication technologies.