Video Data Indexing by 2D C-Trees
Video data contains a large amount of spatial and temporal information. The changes of video frames are quite useful for motion analysis and cannot be provided by other media easily. Chang et al. had proposed an effective 2D string approach for spatial indexing of image data. In this paper, we extend this iconic approach and apply it to video data indexing. We propose 2D C-trees to represent the spatial content within individual frames. A video sequence can then be represented and indexed by a temporal set or an ordering set of 2D C-trees. The similarity retrieval of video matching problem becomes the problem of video sequence matching by computing the similarity, or the minimum cost of matched frames. We present three schemes, full-sequence matching, segment matching and subsequence matching, for video information retrieval. The matching schemes can be modified and extended to approximate sequence matching by computing the partial distance for providing a comprehensive retrieval of video data. A prototype video information system is also developed to validate the effectiveness of video data indexing by 2D C-trees.

title: Allocation of Signature File on Parallel Device for WWW Index Servers
abstract: Signature files are widely used in information retrieval and database. They act as search filters for content-based retrieval. In a large database server, a parallel device is utilized to achieve concurrency access. Efficient allocation of signature files on parallel devices minimizes the query response time and is important in the design of access methods for large scale index servers. We have developed an algorithm to organize the storage of signatures in parallel secondary storage to reduce the query response time. First, signature file is clustered into signature pages. Then, the clustered signature pages are distributed among the disks using the parity check matrix of error correcting code in coding theory. Through the construction of error correcting code, the least frequently simultaneously accessed pages are allocated on the same disk. Performance analysis shows that this algorithm improves the efficiency of access.

title: Light field morphing using 2D features
abstract: We present a 2D feature-based technique for morphing 3D objects represented by light fields. Existing light field morphing methods require the user to specify corresponding 3D feature elements to guide morph computation. Since slight errors in 3D specification can lead to significant morphing artifacts, we propose a scheme based on 2D feature elements that is less sensitive to imprecise marking of features. First, 2D features are specified by the user in a number of key views in the source and target light fields. Then the two light fields are warped view by view as guided by the corresponding 2D features. Finally, the two warped light fields are blended together to yield the desired light field morph. Two key issues in light field morphing are feature specification and warping of light field rays. For feature specification, we introduce a user interface for delineating 2D features in key views of a light field, which are automatically interpolated to other views. For ray warping, we describe a 2D technique that accounts for visibility changes and present a comparison to the ideal morphing of light fields. Light field morphing based on 2D features makes it simple to incorporate previous image morphing techniques such as nonuniform blending, as well as to morph between an image and a light field.

title: FGS-based video streaming test-bed for MPEG 21 universal multimedia access with digital item adaptation
abstract: It is a challenging problem to stream real-time video over heterogeneous networks with time-varying channel conditions and devices with different capabilities. In this paper, we present an FGS-based unicast video streaming test bed, which is now being considered by the MPEG-4/21 committee as a reference test bed. The proposed system supports resource adaptation delivery of the MPEG-21 DIA scheme which leads to a more strict evaluation methodology according to the MPEG committee specified common test conditions for scalable video coding. It provides easy control of media delivery with duplicable network conditions. To provide the best quality of service for each client, we propose relevant rate control, error protection, and transmission approaches in the content server, network interface, and clients, respectively.

title: FERMA: An Efficient Geocasting Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks with Multiple Target Regions
abstract: Some sensor applications are interested in collecting data from multiple regions. For supporting such applications with multiple target regions, most conventional protocols are based on either a network flooding or multiple unicastig to cover those more than one target region. Either one will result in a lot of redundant packets to transmit by energy scared sensor nodes. To alleviate this problem, we propose a novel geocasting scheme which can make a suitable shared path among multiple target regions. We utilize the theorem of “Fermat Point,” in order to find an optimal junction point branching into each region. By using this shared path, an interest dissemination can be performed very efficiently. Our simulation study shows that the proposed scheme FERMA reduces a lot of network traffic and achieves significant energy saving as the number of target regions increase.

title: Optimal Transmission Schedules in TWDM Optical Passive Star Networks
abstract: This paper is concerned with optimal transmission schedules in the TWDM (time and wavelength division multiplexed) optical passive star network. Our model of the network consists of a set V of N nodes with N tunable transmitters and N fixed-tuned receivers (where each node is assigned a transmitter-receiver pair), k wavelengths (each wavelength is shared by N k receivers where N k is an integer), and tuning time δ > 0 (in units of time slot, for transmitters to tune from one wavelength to another). We assume that at any given time slot, at most one transmission can be done per wavelength. An optimal transmission schedule is defined to be the one that schedules transmissions such that for each node v in V, the transmitter in v transmits once to every receiver in V — {v} within a repeating cycle of minimum length. We present an optimal transmission schedule for each tuning time, and show that the cycle length of any optimal transmission schedule is max {N(N — 1)/k, kδ + N — 1}.

title: An interactive video delivery and caching system using video summarization
abstract: With the advance of high-speed network technologies, the availability and popularity of streaming media content over the Internet has grown rapidly in recent years. The delivery and caching of streaming media must be handled in a different fashion than that of traditional non-streaming objects such as HTML or image files, because of its distinct characteristics and user viewing patterns. We propose a novel scheme that provides users with the video summary (a number of key-frame images) before they download the file, and options for them to select the starting playback position. We introduce the content analysis service to achieve these functionalities. The video content analysis performs shot boundary detection, key-frame selection, and face detection and tracking. The results of the processing are a segmented video sequence and an XML-based meta-data describing the video content. We also design a caching system that utilizes our video abstraction and summarization technique. Our integrated video delivery and caching system combines content-aware segmentation, prefix caching, prefetching, and cooperative caching. We describe how our scheme can be applied in three proposed caching architectures.