SBIR Phase I: A Cloud Client Service for Next Generation of Mobile Computing, Leveraging Low Latency Video Encoder Algorithms

这一小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将是支持目前无法实现的各种低延迟视频应用。其中最有趣的是在云计算领域，互联网上某个数据中心的服务器远程运行客户端的应用程序，并将逐帧视频提供给客户端的观众。这使得客户端设备非常便宜，只由一个视频解码器和一个输入(如鼠标键盘)组成，而图形或计算密集型任务则在云中强大的服务器上运行，这些服务器可以根据需要出租给客户端。这种服务器-客户端模式也可以在公司或学校内部使用，极大地简化了IT要求。对于高安全性的应用程序，这也有一个优势，因为所有数据都是远程存储的。用户设备上没有任何本地内容会受到危害。这样的云计算服务已经上线，但它们可以运行的应用程序范围受到缺乏良好的低延迟视频编码的限制。解决这一问题开启了人们购买、维护和使用个人计算机和软件的全新范式。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目研究实时超低延迟视频压缩技术。该研究的目标是使视频能够在诸如因特网、蜂窝电话网络、卫星网络等通信介质上进行编码和传输，从而可以在接收端观看视频，从其在源处编码时起具有不超过1帧的延迟。被称为H.265的最佳和最新的行业标准视频压缩规范将被用作一个框架，使得所产生的压缩视频可以很容易地被广泛使用的软件或硬件解码。将开发和测试监测和调整压缩视频比特率的框架工具和技术，以实现低延迟目标，同时保持压缩视频的高视觉质量。这项研究的结果将是一套可用于设计实现低延迟目标的H.265视频编码器的算法，以及这些算法的局限性的特征，以便评估它们对各种现实世界机会的适用性。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be to enable various low latency video applications that are not possible today. One of the most interesting is in the area of cloud computing, in which a server in a data center somewhere on the Internet runs a client's application remotely, and delivers the frame-by-frame video to the client's viewer. This allows for a very cheap client device, consisting of just a video decoder and an input such as a mouse pad, while graphic or compute intensive tasks run on powerful servers in the cloud that can be leased to the client on an as-needed basis. This server-client model could also be used internally at a company or school, greatly simplifying IT requirements. And for high security applications there is also an advantage, as all data is stored remotely. There is nothing local on the user's device to be compromised. Cloud computing services such as these are already coming on line, but the range of applications they can run is limited by the lack of good low latency video encoding. Solving this problem opens up a whole new paradigm of how people purchase, maintain and use personal computers and software.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project investigates techniques for real-time ultra low latency video compression. The goal of the research is to enable the encoding and transmission of video over a communications medium such as the Internet, cell phone network, satellite network, etc. such that the video may be viewed at the receiving end with no more than 1 frame of latency from when it was encoded at the source. The best and newest industry-standard video compression specification, called H.265, will be used as a framework such that the resulting compressed video can be readily decoded by widely available software or hardware. Framework tools and techniques to monitor and adjust the bit rate of the compressed video will be developed and tested to achieve the low latency goals while maintaining high visual quality of the compressed video. The result of this research will be a set of algorithms that can be used in the design of an H.265 video encoder that will achieve the low latency goal, as well as a characterization of the limitations of these algorithms such that their applicability to various real-world opportunities can be assessed.