Business from technology

Multimedia processing and communications

Competence

The research group has deep and comprehensive competence in multimedia processing and communications, especially on mobile terminals. The research topics cover different aspects of the design and implementation of multimedia-enabled applications.

  

  

  

  

The main topics include:

• applications and services aware of multimedia metadata
  
• audiovisual content analysis algorithms
  
• current and future video coding algorithms and standards
  
• multimedia communication protocols in different networks
  
• adaptive video communications, control and adaptation in wireless, fixed and home networks
  
• IPTV platforms
  
• DSP software development and design
  
• multimedia processing in embedded hardware
  

Challenges

The amount of digital audio and video content is rapidly increasing. Also, improvement in the quality of video and audio is always being demanded. The increasing demands pose great challenges in developing multimedia applications in the areas of content creation and usage, and sharing of media experiences. Additional challenges come from communication systems; handovers between different networks are especially challenging in mobile devices.

The application development needs to take into account in user interfaces include special requirements for how to find relevant content and how to organise the personal content. The communication systems need to take the properties of the multimedia content into account in order to provide maximised user experience when limited network resources are used. For example, the video data rate needs to be adapted according to the available communication resources in order to provide a high-quality, error-free video streaming experience. Finally, the implementation of the multimedia processing algorithms such as video codec in wireless devices is a challenging task since computational recourses are limited, but there is a lot of demand for decoding of high resolution (HD) video content.

Solutions

We have implemented reference platforms for research and licensing purposes that implement multimedia-aware applications and communications systems

• Context-aware personal video sharing and retrieval platform. The platform enables end-to-end multimedia content creation and management using mobile phones. The mobile content creation platform allows context information to be attached to self-created content. Videos may be shared and retrieved by utilising the Nokia Video Center multimedia RSS client or the JavaScript-based retrieval interface developed by VT
  

• Wireless IPTV platform. The IPTV development platform provides a cost-effective and realistic environment for the testing and development of a wide range of video transmission technologies, including applications software, video codecs, adaptive video streaming, Quality of Service (QoS), mobility, IPv6, and transport protocols. Furthermore, a controlled network environment is provided by using a network simulation tool in a WLAN environment, WiMAX, or 3G cellular network.
  

• Portable multimedia software library and software implementations for several processor architectures and operating systems. The supported processors are typical MCU and DSP processors used in mobile devices, e.g. TI DSPs and ARM processors, as well as Intel-based processors used in computers. Supported operating systems include Linux, Symbian and Windows.
  

Finally, we have lot of know-how and expertise in the development of multimedia application and communication software for mobile devices, including the newest DSP or MCU processors.

Benefits

We can offer expertise or licence tools for planning and developing multimedia-enabled services, applications and technology. The expertise and software available from VTT enable faster time-to-market development cycles and efficient outsourcing of demanding multimedia processing implementation work. Our offering includes:

• framework for quick implementation of content analysis algorithms for different application domains
  
• metadata visualisation solutions
  
• multimedia metadata for personal use on mobile devices
  
• development and implementation of multimedia codecs and systems
  
• DSP software implementation in different processor architectures
  
• design and optimization of DSP algorithms: reliability, speed and resource usage
  
• audio/video processing middleware for Windows, Linux and Maemo, and soon for the Symbian environment
  
• consultation services on IPTV platforms
  
• consultation on multimedia communications.
  

References and merits

• Contract projects on metadata production and management with manufacturers and service providers.
  
• Contract projects on video codec development and optimization, and implementations of other A/V processing tools for device, software and chip manufacturers.
  
• Scientific publications in many international conferences and journals to be found by publication search