Abstract:

The MPEG-21 standard forms a comprehensive multimedia framework covering the entire multimedia distribution chain. In particular, it provides a flexible approach to represent, process, and transact complex multimedia objects which are referred to as Digital Items (DIs). DIs can be quite generic, independent of the application domain, and can encompass a diversity of media resources and metadata. This flexibility has an impact on the level of interoperability between systems and applications, since not all the functionality needs to be implemented. Furthermore, additional semantic rules may be implemented through the processing of the Digital Item which is possibly driven by proprietary metadata. This jeopardizes interoperability and consequently raises barriers to the successful achievement of augmented and transparent use of multimedia resources. In this context, we have investigated and evaluated the interoperability at the semantic level of Digital Items throughout the automated production, delivery and consumption of complex multimedia resources in heterogeneous environments. This paper describes the studies conducted, the experiments performed, and the conclusions reached towards that goal.

Further information about this workshop can be found here.

Place/Date: Vancouver, CA, October 2008

Participant(s): UNIKLU

Contributors: UNIKLU and INESC

Abstract:

End-to-end support for Quality of Service (QoS) has been broadly discussed in the literature. Many technologies have been proposed, each focusing on specific aspects for providing QoS guarantees to the end user. However, the integrated management of the end-to-end chain preserving QoS in heterogeneous environments is still a significant issue and insufficiently addressed to date. In this paper we propose an integrated management supervisor that takes into account the requirements from all stakeholders along the multimedia content delivery chain and provides an end-to-end management solution enabling QoS to the end user. This architecture and the subsystems that can be distributed along the end-to-end chain are detailed in this paper.

Further information about EuMob’08 can be found here.

Place/Date: Oulu, Finland, July 9, 2008

Participant(s): UNIKLU

Contributors: UNIKLU, INESC, PRISM, ULANC, TUT, DTAG

• A Demonstration Infrastructure for E2E QoS Services
• A QoS Provisioning Framework for Wireless Mesh Network
• Content Handling and Protection
• Enabling Quality of Service for End-to-End Multimedia Content Delivery through Admission
• Enthrone Experimental Infrastructure for E2E QoS Provisioning
• Leveraging community standards for wide compatibility in Digital Item
• Scalable Video Coding and Transcoding
• The Methodology for Testbed Validation and Performance Assessment
• Using MPEG-21 and Web Services to achieve end-to-end QoS management
• Video Quality Optimisation in the Context of DVB-H

Further information about AQTR 2008 can be found here.

Place/Date: Cluj, Romania, May 22-25 2008

Organizer: Thomson, LaBRI

Contributors: Thomson, LaBRI, INESC, Thales, Univ. of Lancaster, Univ. of Bucharest, Demokritos, TDF, SIEMENS, BSOFT, OPTIBASE

• ENTHRONE Integrated Management Supervisor - Architecture and Interfaces Michael Ransburg, Klagenfurt University, Austria
• Cross-Layer Adaptation and Quality of Service Toufik Ahmed,University of Bordeaux I, France and Ingo Kofler, Klagenfurt University, Austria
• Innovative Metadata Management Pekka Vorne, TUT, Finland and Artur R. Lugmayr, TUT, Finland
• Content Handling and Controlling in Heterogeneous Networking Environment Alex Chernilov, OPTIBASE, Israel
• Scalable Encoding and Transcoding Daniele Renzi, BSOFT, Italy
• Content Protection Tools – The Enthrone Approach Itsik Arbel, Optibase, Israel
• Secure Renewability of Compromised IPMP Tools Beilu Shao, EPFL, Switzerland
• Service management and QoS provisioning Hamid Asgari, TRT, UK
• End-to-End QoS Monitoring Ahmed Mehaoua, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France and Mamadou Sidibé, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France
• Multicast Provisioning and Multicast Service Management Ahmed Mehaoua, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France and Li Fang, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France
• Heterogeneous Multimedia Delivery Marco Mattavelli, EPFL, Switzerland
• Terminal Middleware Samuel Keller, EPFL, Switzerland
• ENTHRONE Large-Scale Pilots Bernhard Feiten, T-Systems, Germany
• ENTHRONE Pilot Validation Results Bernhard Feiten, T-Systems, Germany
• Market Assessment & Analysis Vassiliki Apostolopoulou, Telecompare, Greece
• Business Modelling Context Nikos Panagiotarakis, Telecompare, Greece

The workshop takes place on May 7, 2008 in Klagenfurt, Austria. The detailed program can be found here.

Additionally, ENTHRONE has organized a special session at WIAMIS 2008 ADVISE which will take place on May 8, 2008 as part of the WIAMIS main track. To register for WIAMIS 2008 please click here.

Place/Date: Klagenfurt, Austria, May 7-9, 2008

Organizer: UNIKLU

Contributors: THOMSON, UNIKLU, LABRI, TU, OPTIBASE, BSOFT, EPFL, TRT, PRISM, DTAG, TEC, SIEMENS, ULANC, UniS, UPB

• An MPLS-DiffServ Experimental Core Network Infrastructure for E2E QoS Content Delivery
• Measuring Quality of Experience for MPEG-21-based Cross-Layer Multimedia Content Adaptation
  
• The ENTHRONE 2 Metadata Management Tool (MATool) (WISE 2008 MATool Life Demonstration)
• QoS Monitoring Framework for End-to-End Service Management in Wired and Wireless Networks
• End-to-End QoS through Integrated Management of Content, Networks and Terminals: The ENTHRONE Project View
  

Further information about WISe’08 can be found here.

Place/Date: Doha, Qatar, Apr 1-4, 2008

Organizer: LaBRI

Contributors: Thomson, UNIKLU, PRiSM, TUT, DEM, Thales, Telefonica, INESC

Abstract:

Supporting transparent delivery and convenient use of multimedia content across a wide range of networks and devices is still a challenging task within the multimedia research community; Universal Multimedia Access (UMA) is a vision that has been pursued for quite some time. In multimedia frameworks, content adaptation is the core concept to make progress toward this goal. Most media adaptation engines targeting UMA scale the content w.r.t. terminal capabilities and network resource constraints and do not sufficiently consider end user preferences or even the utility of the adapted content for
the user. Based on our previous work and the support of the MPEG-21 framework, we present a transparent solution to provide a content utility-aware adaptation decision for such utility-unaware multimedia frameworks. The idea is to outsource the challenging utility-aware adaptation decision taking task, which takes many factors into consideration and leads to a complex optimization problem. A realistic use case is adopted to show how related external multimedia frameworks can easily integrate and use our proposed adaptation decision taking Web Service.

Further information about Ambi-sys 2008 can be found here.

Place/Date: Quebec City, Canada, Feb 11-14, 2008

Participant(s): UNIKLU

Contributors: UNIKLU

• Efficient Transformation of MPEG-21 Metadata for Codec-agnostic Adaptation in Real-time Streaming Scenarios
• Combined Adaptation and Caching of MPEG-4 SVC in Streaming Scenarios
• Performance Analysis of Scalable Video Adaptation: Generic versus Specific Approach
• Multimedia Adaptation Decisions Modelled as Non-Deterministic Operations

Further information about WIAMIS’08 can be found here.

Place/Date: Klagenfurt, Austria, May 7-9, 2008

Participant(s): UNIKLU

Contributors: UNIKLU, ULANC

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to describe a Quality of Service (QoS) model enabling to measure the perceptual quality of video transmissions by exploiting metrics from different layers (service, application, network) in an interoperable way. As such we are able to keep the quality experienced by the end user at a satisfactory level without cost-intensive subjective tests. Therefore, we propose a detailed QoS model for video transmission following the philosophy of the ITU-T’s E-model for audio and show how this can be translated into interoperable description formats offered by the MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework.

Further information about WISe’08 can be found here.

Place/Date: Doha, Qatar, Apr 1-4, 2008

Participant(s): UNIKLU

Contributors: UNIKLU and TID

The increase of wired, wireless and mobile devices and the recent advancement in video compression and transmission in diverse environments is unprecedented. Multimedia communication is becoming an indispensable feature and provides an effective mean for human communications. The ENTHRONE special session aims to addresses an important issue related to Quality of Service (QoS) adaptation for the delivery of multimedia services over next generation networks. This session covers future multimedia communication systems that can be part of an end-to-end system, including support of the user’s needs and preferences with taking into consideration the terminal capabilities, the content specification and the underlying networking technologies. The purpose is to provide a control on the offered Quality of Service and Quality of Experience (QoE) by providing minimum packet losses, stringent delay boundary, and exploiting to the outmost the available resources at different multimedia system components (i.e. network / terminal / content). This special session presents the achievements of the ENTHRONE EC-funded R&D project and it is looking for papers coming from people of media coding and networking fields to meet, interact and exchange ideas targeting the above objectives.

Details: http://www.wiamis2008.org/specialSessionADVISE.html

Place/Date: Klagenfurt, AT, May 7-9, 2008

Organizer: LABRI, UNIKLU, TBM