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gBFlavor: a new tool for fast and automatic generation of generic bitstream syntax descriptions

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Abstract

The efficient adaptation of scalable media resources is a major point of interest, due to today’s tremendous heterogeneity in terms of end-user terminals, network technologies, and coding formats. In order to create a media resource adaptation engine supporting current and future coding formats, a generic (i.e., format-independent) solution is needed. One way to realize this goal is to rely on automatically created textual descriptions of the high-level syntax of binary media resources. MPEG-21 generic Bitstream Syntax Schema (gBS Schema) is a tool that is part of the MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework. It enables the use of generic Bitstream Syntax Descriptions (gBSDs), i.e., textual descriptions in XML, to steer the adaptation of a binary media resource, using format-independent adaptation logic. The major contribution of this paper is the introduction of gBFlavor. It is a novel solution for the automatic and format-agnostic generation of gBSDs. gBFlavor offers the possibility to automatically create a format-specific parser that is able to produce a gBSD, taking as input a particular media resource compliant to the coding format described by the parser. This paper provides an overview of the gBFlavor language, which allows describing the high-level structure of a coding format. The overall functioning of a gBFlavor-enabled adaptation framework is discussed as well. Performance results for two scalable coding formats, in particular H.264/AVC Scalable Video Coding and JPEG2000, show that our proposed solution outperforms existing techniques in terms of execution speed.

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Notes

  1. The term ‘format-agnostic’ indicates the use of format-agnostic software modules; however, it is possible that format-specific information still has to be interpreted.

  2. Only the gBS Schema is described in the specification, together with the behaviour of a gBSDtoBin parser.

  3. Examples of applications are the exploitation of temporal scalability and the removal of violent scenes.

  4. A web page, available at http://multimedialab.elis.ugent.be/BFlavor/, has been set up, providing the full specification, a user manual, and a number of examples for both BFlavor and gBFlavor.

  5. This means that gBFlavor is backwards compatible with BFlavor. More specifically, based on a gBFlavor code, the gbflavorc translator is also able to produce BSDs and a BS Schema compliant with BSDL.

  6. bx denotes the built-in integer datatypes of MPEG-21 gBS Schema. For instance, datatype b2 denotes a length of two bits.

  7. Available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xwrt/.

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Acknowledgements

The research activities as described in this paper were funded by Ghent University, the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology (IBBT), the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT-Flanders), the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (FWO-Flanders), and the European Union.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departement of Electronics and Information Systems—Multimedia Lab, Ghent University—IBBT, Gaston Crommenlaan 8, bus 201, 9050, Ledeberg-Ghent, Belgium

    Davy Van Deursen, Wesley De Neve, Davy De Schrijver & Rik Van de Walle

Authors
  1. Davy Van Deursen
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  2. Wesley De Neve
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  3. Davy De Schrijver
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  4. Rik Van de Walle
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Davy Van Deursen.

Appendices

Appendix 1: BSD to gBSD conversion for H.264/AVC SVC bitstreams

Listing 8 Excerpt of a BS Schema for H.264/AVC SVC
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Listing 9 Excerpt of a STX stylesheet for transforming BSDs into gBSDs (with H.264/AVC SVC as underlying coding format)
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Appendix 2: gBFlavor code for H.264/AVC SVC

Listing 10 Excerpt of a gBFlavor code for H.264/AVC SVC [41]
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Listing 11 Excerpt of a gBSD, generated by gBFlavor and using the high-level syntax code given in Listing 10 (no application is specified)
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Van Deursen, D., De Neve, W., De Schrijver, D. et al. gBFlavor: a new tool for fast and automatic generation of generic bitstream syntax descriptions. Multimed Tools Appl 40, 453–494 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-008-0214-3

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