Frame differencing-based segmentation for low bit rate video codec using H.264. S. Sowmyayani* and P. Arockia Jansi Rani

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1 Int. J. Computational Vision and Robotics, Vol. 6, Nos. 1/2, Frame differencing-based segmentation for low bit rate video codec using H.264 S. Sowmyayani* and P. Arockia Jansi Rani Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli , Tamilnadu, India *Corresponding author Abstract: In video sequence coding, a combination of temporal and spatial coding technique is used in order to remove the predictable or redundant image content and encode only the unpredictable information. The objective of video compression technique is to increase the coding efficiency and to increase the data rate savings. A segmentation-based compression method is proposed to achieve this goal. In this paper, static portions are identified using frame differencing method and segmented during the encoding process. This encoded information is passed to the synthesiser. In synthesis, information which is passed during segmentation process is added to reconstruct the video. This method is integrated with the conventional video codec H.264/AVC video codec. Experimental results substantially proved the data rate is reduced by as much as 25%. Keywords: digital video compression; H.264/AVC; MPEG-4 Part 10; VCEG; advanced video coding; AVC. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Sowmyayani, S. and Arockia Jansi Rani, P. (2016) Frame differencing-based segmentation for low bit rate video codec using H.264, Int. J. Computational Vision and Robotics, Vol. 6, Nos. 1/2, pp Biographical notes: S. Sowmyayani is pursuing her PhD in Computer Science in Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, India. She received her MSc in Computer Science from St. Xaviers College (autonomous), Tirunelveli, India in 2011 and MPhil in Computer Science in Manomaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, India in Her research interest includes video compression. P. Arockia Jansi Rani is working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, India. She received her PhD in CSE from Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, India in She is in teaching profession for the last ten years. Her area of interest includes digital image processing, neural networks and data mining. She has presented her research papers at various national and international conferences. Copyright 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

2 42 S. Sowmyayani and P. Arockia Jansi Rani 1 Introduction Video compression is needed to facilitate both storage and transmission in real time. Several compression procedures are developed and combined every day. A revolution has broken out in the media industry in the last decade. The research in audio and video material has nowadays taken a fundamental position in technology. An essential area in which engineers are sparing no effort is video compression. Video compression makes it possible to use, transmit, or manipulate videos easier and faster. In MPEG4 (Katsaggelos et al., 1998), shape coding was used to code shapes in a frame after they are segmented. The main goal in video compression is to minimise the weight of the files and maximise the quality of the reconstruction (Sikora, 2005). The principle for achieving efficient compression is to eliminate unnecessary data. Two main features can be examined to deem the negligible information: the redundancy of data and the deficiencies of human visual system. By redundancy of data, spatial and temporal redundancies are meant. Indeed, analysing a video sequence reveals that a large amount of data is recognised to appear repeatedly. Within a single frame, large areas of pixels are homogeneous and present significant correlation. When analysing consecutive frames a big amount of redundant data between frames also exists. Hence a percentage of information can be discharged. When elaborating the television systems, advantages have been taken of the deficiencies of the human visual system to simplify some of the elements: on the basis of these deficiencies, the number of frames per second or lines per frame has been adjusted, some colour corrections have been skipped, and some spectrum overlapping made possible. ITU-T H.264/MPEG-4 (Part 10) advanced video coding (commonly referred as H.264/AVC) is the newest entry in the series of international video coding standards (Sullivan and Wiegand, 2005). It is currently the most powerful and state-of-the-art standard, and was developed by a Joint Video Team (JVT) consisting of experts from ITU-T s Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and ISO/IEC s Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) (Ndjiki-Nya et al., 2004, ISO/IEC, 2002). As has been the case with past standards, its design provides the most current balance between the coding efficiency, implementation complexity, and cost. Bosch (2011), proposed a method to use segmentation in video sequences using texture and motion models. Both these models are used separately and data rate is saved upto 15%. And it has a major drawback that texture segmentation takes more time. In earlier methods, frame differencing was performed on consecutive frames which have limitation to detect slow moving objects. The proposed method allows skipping of macroblocks. The approach has been integrated into an H.264/AVC video codec (Keshaveni et al., 2010; Richardson, 2004). The rest of the paper is organised as follows: Section 2 describes overview of the proposed method. Section 3 explains the proposed frame differencing method. Section 4 describes the way of integrating this system with H.264/AVC video codec and addresses the synthesis of static regions. Section 5 demonstrates the experimental results of FDSVC followed by conclusion in Section 6.

3 Frame differencing-based segmentation for low bit rate video codec 43 2 System overview In this proposed method, frame differencing-based segmentation in video compression (FDSVC), to improve the coding efficiency, video scenes are classified into static and non-static parts with frame differencing. Segmentation identifies the static regions with no important subjective details and generates coarse masks as well as side information for the synthesiser at the decoder side. The synthesiser replaces the static regions by inserting skipped regions. Segmentation and synthesiser are based on MPEG-7 descriptors (Ndjiki-Nya et al., 2004). A general scheme for video coding using Segmentation and synthesis is illustrated in Figure 1. The goal is to examine various non-static regions in the video and skip static regions in some parts of video and estimate its impact on the data rate. The segmentation identifies homogeneous regions in a frame and labels them as static. This step can be done using normal frame differencing (Prabhakar et al., 2012). The skipped macroblocks information is sent to the synthesiser. Figure 1 Frame differencing-based video coding: system overview For compression, H.264/AVC video codec is used. During synthesis, skipped macroblocks are synthesised using side information. 3 Segmentation using frame differencing The video sequence is first divided into groups of frames (GoF). Each GoF consists of two key frames (the first and last frame of the GoF) and several middle frames to be modelled with frame differencing. It is shown in Figure 2. Frame differencing: Frame differencing is a technique which checks the apparent change in pixel values of two video frames. If the pixels have changed there apparently was something changing in the frame. The frame differencing algorithm (Jain and Nagel, 1979; Haritaoglu et al., 2000) is used for this purpose which gives the position of apparent changed pixels in the video frames as output. This extracted position is then used to extract a rectangular image template whose size is dynamic depending upon the dimension of object from that region of the frame. The task to identify moving objects in a video sequence is critical and fundamental for a general object tracking system. For this moving object identification, frame differencing technique (Jain and Nagel, 1979) is applied to the consecutive frames, which identifies all the moving objects in consecutive frames. Frame differencing is based on luminance values of the frames. In quarter common intermediate format (QCIF) video sequence, luminance values illustrate the illumination. Only those macroblocks which

4 44 S. Sowmyayani and P. Arockia Jansi Rani have same luminance value as it is in reference frame are skipped and not the whole frame. Figure 2 Illustration of GOF, (a) a sequences of GOFs, (b) two key frames within a GOF (c) splitting of video sequence into IBBPBBP format (a) (b) (c) This basic technique employs the image subtraction operator (Rafael and Richard, 2002) which takes two frames as input and produces segmented output. The two frames are reference frame (I or P frame) and intermediate frames (B frame). Difference is calculated between macroblock of 1st reference frame and B frame. Again, the difference is calculated between 2nd reference frame and B frame. If the difference is zero for any of the reference frame, then that reference is taken as keyframe for that particular macroblock. The two frames are reference frame (I or P frame) and intermediate frames (B frame). The output is a segmented frame that is produced after subtracting the intermediate frame pixel values from the keyframe pixel values. It is shown in Figure 3. The keyframe which is used for macroblock skipping will be sent as side information as a control bit. This subtraction is in a single pass. The general operation performed for this frame differencing algorithm is given by: DIFF(, i j) = I (, i j) I (, i j) (1) 1 2 where DIFF[i, j] represents the difference image of reference frame I 1 and B frame I 2. After the frame differencing operation the binary threshold operation is performed to convert difference image into a binary image with some threshold value and thus the moving object is identified with some irrelevant non-moving pixels due to flickering of camera. And some moving pixels are also present in binary image which corresponds to wind, dust, illusion, etc. All these extra pixels should be removed in steps of pre-processing.

5 Frame differencing-based segmentation for low bit rate video codec 45 Figure 3 Illustration of segmentation process This threshold technique is done with the DIFF(i, j). If DIFF(i, j) is greater than threshold T, it is movable portions, else it is static region. The threshold taken here is not fixed it can vary according to the perception. The role of threshold T is just to separate the objects pixels from the background. In this FDSVC method, frames are divided into macroblock. Frame differencing is calculated for each macroblock. After segmentation, video consists of all I frames and segmented P frames. Skipped macroblock information is sent to the synthesiser. 4 Integration and synthesis 4.1 Integration into H.264/AVC video codec The segmentation technique has been integrated into the H.264/AVCJM 11.0 reference software (JVT H.264 Software Reference Manual, 2009). The block diagram of basic H.264/AVC encoder is shown in Figure 4. The process of H.264/AVC video codec is explained in Wiegand and Sullivan (2003), Marpe et al. (2003) and Sullivan and Wiegand (1998). In the proposed FDSVC method, segmented video sequence is given to the encoder. Macroblocks which are marked as static in segmentation process are skipped during encoding. The encoded video sequence is given to the decoder. The decoder produces the segmented video sequence. 4.2 Synthesiser The synthesiser is used to reconstruct the missing pixels in the decoded video sequence. For this purpose, side information from channel which is passed by segmentation process is used. The insignificant portions in the video are given using motion parameter set and the reference frame is given by control parameter. By using that information, the static regions can be reconstructed by warping the static regions from the key frame towards each synthesisable static region identified by the segmentation. It is shown in Figure 5. The output of the synthesiser is the reconstructed decoded video sequence.

6 46 S. Sowmyayani and P. Arockia Jansi Rani Figure 4 Block diagram of H.264/AVC encoder Figure 5 Illustration of synthesiser 5 Experimental results The proposed video codec was tested using QCIF sequences such as Claire, Coastguard, Carphone, Akiyo, Foreman and Suzie. Figure 6 shows the segmented results obtained for some of the sequences. The following parameters were used for the H.264/AVC video codec: quantisation parameter (QP) is set to 24 and 30; one reference frame; three B-frames. Results show that movable portions in the sequence are segmented correctly and static regions are skipped. One of the original B frames in each sequence and the respective segmented frame are shown in Figure 6.

7 Frame differencing-based segmentation for low bit rate video codec 47 Figure 6 Results after segmentation for (a) Claire (b) miss-america (c) grandma sequences (see online version for colours) (a) (b) (c) The static region extracted by the segmentation algorithm is indicated as the black region in the frame. This process helps to identify the significant frame portions which should be encoded with high fidelity.

8 48 S. Sowmyayani and P. Arockia Jansi Rani From Figure 7, it is clear that when quantisation parameter is 24, minute information in the video are clearly displayed. When quantisation parameter is 30, video seems blurring. Figure 7 Decoded and synthesised frame of (a) Claire sequence (b) mother-daughter sequence (c) miss-america sequence with QP = 24 and QP = 30 (see online version for colours) (a) (b) (c)

9 Frame differencing-based segmentation for low bit rate video codec Estimating the data rate The data rate (or bit rate) is the size of the video file per second of data, usually expressed in kilobits or megabits per second. The data rate savings for each test sequence is calculated by subtracting from the original data rate (coded with the H.264/AVC video codec) the data rate savings for macroblocks that are not coded using the H.264/AVC video codec. The data rate used to construct the side information is then added to obtain the data rate for the segmented coded video. The side information which is shown in Table 1 contains the segmentation masks (macroblock-accurate), eight motion parameters and one control flag to indicate which key frame is used as the reference frame (the first frame or the last frame of the GOF). The data rate for side information is 256 bits for the motion parameters and one bit for the control flag. The data rate for segmentation mask depend size of the mask and, is typically about 600 bits. Hence the side information is less than 1 kb per frame. Table 1 List of side information to be sent to the synthesiser Side information Size (in bits) Segmentation binary mask About 600 Control flag 1 Motion parameter 256 The visual quality was comparable to the quality of the decoded sequences using the H.264/AVC video codec. When quantisation parameter increases, there is an improvement in data rate. The data rate can be described by the following: 1 AVG B MB NBB = NMB NB f 2 DRSSMB = NB AVG B NSMB MB DRSSMB SI 3 DR fd = DRH N f where AVG B average bit allocation per MB for a B-frame, NB B total number of bits MB N for B-frames (kb), NB number of B-frames, MB number of MBs per frame, f DRS SMB data rate savings for total skip MBs (kb), N SMB number of skip MBs, DR fd data rate for the sequence using frame differencing model) at frame rate (kb/s), DR H264 original data rate at frame rate (kb/s), SI data allocation for total side information (kb), N f number of total frames, frames per second = 15. The data rate savings obtained for some of the sequences are shown in Table 2. Results are calculated for FDSVC and H.264/AVC video codec in order to find data rate

10 50 S. Sowmyayani and P. Arockia Jansi Rani savings with quantisation parameter 24 and 30 and PSNR is between 35 db to 40 db. From Table 2, it is evident that the average data rate savings is approximately 25%. Table 2 Data rate savings for all sequences Quantisation level H.264 data rate [kb/s] FDSVC data rate [kb/s] Data rate savings [%] Akiyo sequence Claire sequence Carphone sequence Suzie sequence Grandma sequence Miss-America sequence Because of the way the video sequences are encoded and decoded, metrics such as PSNR are not useful tools to measure the visual quality when visual artefact appear. Hence subjective evaluation is useful to measure visual quality. Data rate savings is computed as an objective measure. Results obtained after synthesis are also displayed in Figure 7. Data rate for some sequences using H.264/AVC video codec and FDSVC are compared and are displayed in charts in Figure 8. Data rate savings are also compared with QP in Figure 9. For all sequences in Figure 9, when QP increases, data rate savings also increases. If the quantisation parameter increases above 30, there is degradation in visual quality of the video sequence. If QP is below 24, there is a decrease in bit rate. When compared to H.264/AVC video coding, time taken by the proposed method is minimum due to skipping of many macroblocks. FDSVC data rate savings is compared with texture-based video compression. In texture-based video compression, two techniques are used: grey-level cooccurence matrix (GLCM) + split-merge and gabor + split-merge. Data rate and its savings of those techniques and FDSVC are shown in Table 3. The proposed method saves more data rate than texture-based video compression method.

11 Frame differencing-based segmentation for low bit rate video codec 51 Figure 8 Bar charts as a function of compression size of all sequences using H.264/AVC and FDSVC (see online version for colours) Figure 9 Bar charts as a function of quantisation parameter and data rate savings (see online version for colours) Table 3 Comparative analysis of FDSVC with texture-based video compression GLCM + Split-merge Data rate (kb/s) Texture-based video compression Savings (%) Akiyo sequence Gabor + Split-merge Data rate (kb/s) Savings (%) Data rate (kb/s) H.264 date rate: 6, kb/s FDSVC Savings (%) 5, , , Carphone H.264 data rate: 1, kb/s 8, , , Claire sequence H.264 data rate: 5, kb/s 4, , , Suzie H.264 data rate:5, kb/s 4, , ,

12 52 S. Sowmyayani and P. Arockia Jansi Rani 6 Conclusions In the proposed method, video sequence is segmented using frame differencing method before video compression. The goal is to increase the coding efficiency for video sequences containing non-static regions in static regions and to increase data rate savings. Frame differencing method is used to segment static regions in each frame at the encoder and synthesise those static regions in the frame at the decoder. This method is incorporated into a conventional video codec H.264/AVC video codec where the regions modelled by the frame differencing are not coded in a usual manner. The side information is sent to the decoder. Hence size of the video sequence is very much reduced. This method reduces the incapability of tracking more complex motion object of the video sequences. From the experimental results, it is proved that the data rate is reduced by as much as 25%. In future, FDSVC can be applied with the texture and motion model segmentation for more data rate savings. References Bosch, M., Zhu, F. and Delp, J.E. (2011) Segmentation-based video compression using texture and motion models, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Vol. 5, No. 7, pp Haritaoglu, I., Harwood, D. and Davis, I. (2000) Realtime surveillance of people and their activities, IEEE T. Pattern Anal., Vol. 22, No. 8, pp ISO/IEC (2002) JTC 1/SC29/WG11 N4668, MPEG-4 Overview. Jain, R. and Nagel, H. (1979) On the analysis of accumulative difference pictures from image sequences of real world scenes, IEEE T. Pattern Anal., Vol. 1, No. 2, pp JVT H.264 Software Reference Manual (2009) H.264/ AVC Reference Software Manual, Joint Video Team (JVT) of ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 and ITU-T SG16 Q.6). Joint Video Team of ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1 (2009) Draft ITU-T Recommendation and Final Draft International Standard of Joint Video Specification (ITU-T Rec. H.264 ISO/IEC AVC), Document JVT-G050r1; technical corrigendum 1 documents JVT-K050r1 (non-integrated form) and JVT-K051r1 (integrated form), March 2004; and Fidelity Range Extensions documents JVT-L047 (non-integrated form) and JVT-L050 (integrated form), (2004). Katsaggelos, A., Kondi, L., Meier, L., Ostermann, J. and Schuster, G. (1998) MPEG-4 and rate-distortion-based shape-coding techniques, in Proc. IEEE, Vol. 86, No. 6, pp Keshaveni, N., Ramachandran, S. and Gurumurthy, K.S. (2010) Design and FPGA implementation of integer transform and quantization processor and their inverses for H.264 video encoder, in International Journal of Computer Science & Communication, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp Marpe, D., Schwarz, H. and Wiegand, T. (2003) Context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding in the H.264/AVC video compression standard, in the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology. Ndjiki-Nya, P., Novychny, O. and Wiegand, T. (2004) Video content an analysis using MPEG-7 descriptors, in Proceedings of the First European Conference on Visual Media Production, Great Britain, London. Prabhakar, N., Vaithiyanathan, V., Sharma, A.P., Singh, A. and Singhal, P. (2012) Object tracking using frame differencing and template matching, in Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Vol. 4, No. 24, pp

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