Presentation

The Audio Video Signal Processing Area studies and develops advanced Multimedia signal processing techniques (fixed and moving images, 2D and 3D) dealing with all the step involved in the information processing, i.e. capturing, encoding, transmission, processing and final presentation of the signal.

A particular attention is devoted to the studies dealing with multimodal techniques where audio and video are mutually related to solve speech and speaker recognition problems, person’s authentication and quality of media evaluation.

The range of related applications goes form the images restoration, to the computer vision, to the pattern recognition in multimedia database querying, covering areas of interest dealing with cultural heritage, security, surveillance, biometry, industrial quality control, man-machine interfaces development, immersive communications, biomedical applications HDTV and 3DTV.

The research program of the Area is related to three main thematic areas.

Cultural Heritage ICT, Multimedia Data Handling, Subjective and Objective Audio Video Evaluation.

Cultural Heritage ICT

The artistic patrimony of Italy is rich and among the more relevant in the world, this leads consider the Cultural Heritage a strategic asset to show off in the framework of the economic and territorial development policies. Under this point of view a great care has to be devoted to the new technologies for the protection, the creation and the management of the dedicated information date bases, the visibility, the promotion and the accessibility of the Cultural Heritage.

The contribution of Area 7 in this field includes the following activities:

Agreement with the “Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici” in Rome
Aventino Project and Testaccio Project: design and development of interactive multimedia visit to the archaeological sites by means of mobile devices (phones, iPhone, iPad)
VOCS Project - Voice on Content Storyteller: Development of a new voice based interactive navigation and access platform for the Cultural Heritage contents by means of mobile devices. VOCS will allow to design and make available cultural contents by means of an innovative voice based tool.
MAMI Project - Modulo di Addestramento Multisensoriale Integrato (Multisensorial Training Integrated Module), a project of the Ministry of Economic Development – Communication Department: A study of analog and digital technologies for the capturing and displaying of holographic imagery.
PhD: Le tecnologie della comunicazione e dell’informazione applicate ai Beni Culturali  (Information and Communication Technologies applied to the Cultural Heritage) – Ingegneria Elettronica, Università di Roma Tre
Teaching courses: Sistemi elettronici per i Beni Culturali – Ingegneria Elettronica, Università di Roma Tre

Development of Algorithms for the image restoration

Multimedia data handling

This activity is related to the query process of multimedia information (text, audio and video) from an electronic database, or to the automatic tuning of TV channels, by means of relation among multimedia objects and clustering of databases into homogeneous classes. The activity of the Area include the development and trial of automatic techniques based on the content, to store, label and query of multimedia digital data stored in databases of big dimensions.

More in detail Area 7 is involved into the followings:

Irma Project - Intelligent Retrieval in Multimedia Archives: to improve the value of multimedia data with high cultural content, by means of indexing and retrieval semantic tools.

MediAccess Project of the Ministry of Economic Development – Communication Department: design and evaluation of the accessibility and usability of the multimedia platforms and of the related contents used in the Public Administration.
PhD: Analisi semantica multimodale di dati multimediali (Multimodal Semantic Analysis of Multimedia Data) – Ingegneria Elettronica, Università di Roma Tre
Development of Algorithms for the multimodal visualization and classification of images.

Objective and subjective audio-video quality assessment

The processing and delivery of audio video signals, from the production sites to the final users, often introduce a not controlled loss of quality in relation to the “source signal”; this problem is taken into account with particular care in the design of applications and by the service providers when taking decisions related to the minimum level of media quality that may be accepted by the final users; in the selection of the encoding engines the output audiovisual quality has a key role to provide the best balance in the amount of information delivered, the required bandwidth and the perceived quality.

The quality may be evaluated subjectively, i.e. with the participation of humans, and or by means of objective tools, i.e the quality metrics; both are able to provide a quality score that gives the quality index. Area 7 is involved in the development of both objective and subjective quality assessment tools; taking also into account which could be the more acceptable environment of evaluation to the human assessing subjects (ecological measurements for the Quality of Experience).

The most recent activities of the Area deal with:

HEVC Project: the biggest formal subjective assessment trial ever done in the history of video quality assessment. More than 130 test session in the same testing effort carried out to perform the evaluation of the Proposal in response to the Call for new Technologies for a High Efficiency Video Coding standard in the framework of ISO/JEC/SC29/WG11 MPEG. This effort has allowed to select the best candidates tools for the forthcoming ISO standard.

MPEG Test sub-Group Chair: QoE – Quality of Experience of Stereoscopic TV, Multi-vision signal subjective evaluation; streaming of video over http assessment.

QUALINET Project - European Network on Quality of Experience in Multimedia Systems and Services, COST Action IC1003 (Management Committee): development and improvement of subjective and objective quality assessment methods to measure the new multimedia services and products
Design and experimental trial of a new paradigm for the ecological assessment of audiovisual quality based on cognitive techniques

Ideazione e sperimentazione di un nuovo paradigma di valutazione ecologica della qualità audio video basato su metriche cognitive
Development of Algorithms for the technical quality of audiovideo signal (in cooperation with the “Infocom Department of the Rome University “La Sapienza”)