Quality Aware Transcoding

The primary focus of this research is in enabling multimedia web access from slow, expensive and congested networks using application level techniques. We utilize transcoding as the enabling technology.

Transcoding is a transformation that is used to convert a multimedia object from one form to another (frequently trading off object fidelity for size). For transcoding to be useful, we need to understand the tradeoff characteristics: the information quality loss, the computational overhead required in computing the transcoding and the potential space benefits. To illustrate for one specific case, we characterized the information quality tradeoffs, the computational requirements and the potential space gain of a transcoding that changes the JPEG compression metric. We utilized this technology in a network proxy service that serves different versions of the images to different client based on their network characteristics. Next we utilized this technology in a web service that utilizes Quality Aware transcoding to manage its available bandwidth and provide differentiated QoS depending on the client.

Back to Research Projects List

Surendar Chandra
Department of Computer Science
Duke University, Box 90129
Durham, NC 27708-0129 USA
Phone:  (919) 660-6556
FAX:  (919) 660-6519
email:  surendar@cse.nd.edu

[ Description | Researchers | Papers | Software | Documentation | Funding | Links]

1999 © Duke University Department of Computer Science
Question/Comments: surendar@cse.nd.edu