Page 13 - Video Coding for Mobile Communications Efficiency, Complexity, and Resilience

xvi Preface

tested within both an isolated test environment and an H.263 codec. The chap-
ter also investigates the performance of di(erent temporal error concealment
techniques when incorporated within a multiple-reference video codec. In par-
ticular, the chapter ,nds a combination of techniques that best recovers the
spatial-temporal components of a damaged multiple-reference motion vector.
In addition, the chapter develops a multihypothesis temporal concealment tech-
nique to be used with multiple-reference systems.

Audience for the Book

In recent years, mobile video communications has become an active and im-
portant research and development topic in both industry and academia. It is,
therefore, hoped that this book will appeal to a broad audience, including
students, instructors, researchers, engineers, and managers.
Chapter 1 can serve as a quick introduction for managers. Chapters 2 and
3 can be used in an introductory course on the fundamentals and the standards
of video coding. The two chapters can also be used as a quick introduction for
researchers and engineers working on video coding for the ,rst time. More
advanced courses on video coding can also utilize Chapters 4, 7, and 9 to
introduce the students to issues in coding e"ciency, computational complex-
ity, and error resilience. The three chapters can also be used by researchers
and engineers as an introduction and a guide to the relevant literature in the
respective areas. Researchers and engineers will also ,nd Chapters 5, 6, 8,
and 10 useful as examples of the design, implementation, and testing of novel
video coding techniques.

Acknowledgments

We are greatly indebted to past and present members of the Image Commu-
nications Group in the Center for Communications Research, University of
Bristol, for creating an environment from which a book such as this could
emerge. In particular, we would like to thank Dr. Przemys law Czerepi@nski for
his generous help in all aspects of video research, Dr. Greg Cain for interest-
ing discussions on implementation and complexity issues of motion estimation,
Mr. Chiew Tuan Kiang for fruitful discussions on the e"ciency of motion
estimation at very low bit rates, and Mr. Oliver Sohm for providing the MPEG-
4 results of Chapter 8.
We also owe a debt to Joel ClayPool and Angela Dooley from Academic
press who have shown a great deal of patience with us while we pulled this
project together.