GZ05: Multimedia Systems


Lecturer: Mark Handley

Aims: to describe the ways in which multimedia information is captured, processed, and rendered, to introduce multimedia quality of service (QoS) and to compare subjective and objective methods of assessing user satisfaction, to discuss the ways in which multimedia data is transmitted across networks, and to discuss privacy and copyright issues in the context of multimedia.

Learning Outcomes: The ability to: describe different realisations of multimedia tools and the way in which they are used; analyse the structure of the tools in the light of low-level constraints imposed by the adoption of various QoS schemes (ie bottom up approach); analyse the effects of scale and use on both presentation and lower-level requirements (ie top down approach); state the properties of different media streams; compare and contrast different network protocols and to describe mechanisms for providing QoS guarantees in the network.


2010 Lecture Notes

Lecture 1: Introduction

Lecture 2: Audio Basics
Analog Audio
Sample and Hold
Aliasing
Quantization
Companding
Audio samples from the lecture

Lecture 3: Fourier Transform
Fourier Transform
Discrete Fourier Transform
Discrete Cosine Transform

Lecture 4: Speech Compression
ADPCM
SB-ADPCM
LPC
Audio samples from the lecture

Lecture 5: Music Compression
Perceptual Coding
MPEG 1 Audio, Layer 1/2
Huffman Coding
MPEG 1 Audio, Layer 3 (MP3)
MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC)
Ogg Vorbis
Windows Media Audio
Audio samples from the lecture

Lecture 6: Video
TV Scanning and interlacing
NTSC
PAL
Colourspace representation (RGB, YUV)

Lecture 7: Image Compression
GIF
PNG
JPEG
DCT Basis Functions

Lecture 8:H.261 Video Compression
Interframe vs Intraframe encoding
Motion estimation
Bitstream stucture
H.263

Lecture 9:MPEG Video Compression
I frames, P frames, B frames
MPEG-1 vs MPEG 2
MPEG-4

Lecture 10: System Streams
H.221 framing for ISDN
MPEG-2 Program Stream
MPEG-2 Transport Stream

Lecture 11: IP-based Transport
Networked multimedia applications
UDP vs TCP
Streaming Media with TCP
Streaming Media with UDP

Lecture 12: Transporting Interactive Media
Application Data Units and Packetization
H.261 over RTP Packet Format
Predictor Error
Jitter and Timing recovery
Adaptive Playout Buffer
Loss Concealment

Lecture 13: RTP, A/V Synchronization, Application-level adaptation
Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP)
A/V sync with RTP/RTCP
RTP header compression
Application-level adaptation
FEC and redundant codings.

Lecture 14: Signalling Protocols
H.323
SDP
SIP
RTSP

Lecture 15: OS Scheduling/Buffering
Scheduling
Buffering

Lecture 16: Congestion Control
Purpose of Congestion Control
TCP's congestion control algorithm
Suitability of AIMD for multimedia
TCP-friendly congestion control
Applications and congestion control
Multicast congestion control
DCCP

Lecture 17: Network Queue Management
TCP's queue requirements.
Active queue management (AQM).
Explicit congestion notification (ECN)

Lecture 18: Enhanced QoS
RSVP
Intserv
Diffserv

Lecture 19: Usability of Multimedia
Difference between subject and objective usability metrics.
Audio studies: external factors vs network factors
Video studies: tradeoff between image size, frame rate, quantization.


Previous Years

Notes from 2009.

Audio Samples


Coursework

2010 coursework


Past Exam Papers


Reading List

I don't really recommend any books strongly. These are not too bad.

Recommended books:

F. Halsall: "Multimedia Communications: Applications, Networks, Protocols, and Standards", 1/e 2000 Addison-Wesley

J. Crowcroft, M. Handley, I. Wakeman: "Internetworking Multimedia", 1999 Morgan Kaufmann

F. Fluckiger: "Understanding Networked Multimedia: Applications and Technology", 1/e 1996 Prentice Hall

N. Sharda: "Multimedia Information Networking", 1/e 1999 Prentice Hall

R. Steinmetz, K. Nahrstedt: "Media Coding and Content Processing", 2002 Prentice Hall

J. Irwin, Chwan-Hwa Wu: "Emerging Multimedia Computer Communication Technologies", 1/e 1998 Prentice Hall

F. Kuo, J. J. Garcia Luna-Aceves, W. Effelsberg: "Multimedia Communications: Protocols and Applications", 1/e 1998 Prentice Hall

S.V. Raghavan, S. Tripathi: "Networked Multimedia Systems: Concepts, Architecture, and Design", 1/e 1998 Prentice Hall

A. Milovanovic, Zoran S. Bojkovic, Dragorad A. Milovanovic, Kamisetty Ramamohan Rao: "Multimedia Communication Systems: Techniques, Standards, and Networks", 2002 Prentice Hall