End-to-End Perceptual Quality-Of-Experience Measurement and Optimization to Reshape Modern Video Communication Systems

随着“体验时代”的到来，在我们的电视、平板电脑和智能手机上消费数字视频内容时，丰富和增强感知体验已成为现代视频分发系统的中心目标。然而，最近的调查表明，终端用户糟糕的视频体验质量(QOE)已成为视频服务生态系统的主要威胁。这是一个紧迫而普遍的研究挑战，视频发行商需要有效的机制，不仅可以帮助即时了解个人消费者的QOE，还可以执行战略优化，以经济高效的方式改善视觉QOE。随着超高清、高动态范围、宽色域和高帧频视频等新型媒体格式以及为增强现实和虚拟现实观看体验而创建的视频的日益流行，这一挑战变得更加明显。*该项目的长期研究目标是开发统一的端到端视觉QOE测量、优化和智能解决方案的理论和关键技术，如果成功，将重塑通过全球多媒体分发网络分发视频的方式，同时改善每个人的日常观看体验。具体地说，我们将开发一系列客观的QOE测量算法，为各种媒体内容类型实时产生一致的QOE测量。我们将使用这些新颖的QOE措施来优化视频分发系统设计，重点放在QOE驱动的视频编码、流媒体和质量增强上。我们还将开发深度学习技术，用于QOE评估和QOE驱动的优化。将进行主观QOE测试，以验证和改进正在开发的算法的性能。*该项目将由一个世界领先的研究团队进行，该团队在研究方面做出了杰出的贡献，其证据是许多著名的奖项和认可，以及在顶级期刊和会议上发表的引用最多的文章。该团队还拥有与领先的行业合作伙伴和组织合作的丰富经验。*该项目将有助于加强加拿大在图像处理和多媒体通信领域的声誉、影响力和全球领先地位。它还将帮助产生大量的HQP，他们有望加入加拿大的学术、工业和政府研发组织的劳动力大军。开发的技术将转移到加拿大产业合作伙伴的产品和服务中。因此，加拿大公司将大大受益于收入的增加和在全球市场上竞争力的提高，同时在信息技术领域创造新的就业机会。因此，它有可能对加拿大经济产生持久的影响。

With the arrival of the “era of experience”, enriching and enhancing perceptual experience in consuming digital video content delivered to our TVs, tablets and smartphones has become a central goal of modern video distribution systems. However, recent surveys indicated that the poor video quality-of-experience (QoE) of end users has become a major threat to the video service ecosystem. This presents an urgent and pervasive research challenge, where video distributors require effective mechanisms that can not only help gain instantaneous awareness of the QoE of individual consumers, but also perform strategic optimizations to improve visual QoE in a cost-effective way. The challenge becomes even more pronounced with the growing popularity of novel media format such as ultra high-definition, high dynamic range, wide color gamut, and high frame rate videos, as well as videos created for augmented reality and virtue reality viewing experiences.******The long-term research objective of this project is to develop theories and critical technologies for unified end-to-end visual QoE measurement, optimization and intelligence solutions that, if successful, will reshape how videos are distributed through global multimedia distribution networks and meanwhile improve everyone's everyday viewing experience. Specifically, we will develop a series of objective QoE measurement algorithms that produce consistent QoE measures in real-time for various media content types. We will use these novel QoE measures to optimize video distribution system designs, focusing on QoE-driven video coding, streaming and quality enhancement. We will also develop deep learning technologies for QoE assessment and QoE-driven optimizations. Subjective QoE testing will be conducted to validate and improve the performance of the algorithms being developed.******The project will be carried out by a world leading research team that has a strong track record of making outstanding research contributions, evidenced by numerous prestigious awards and recognitions as well as publications in top journals and conferences with top citations. The team also has extensive experience collaborating with leading industrial partners and organizations.******This project will help strengthen Canada's reputation, impact and global leadership in the field of image processing and multimedia communications. It will also help produce a significant number of HQPs who are expected to join Canada's workforce in academic, industrial and government R&D organizations. The developed technologies will be transferred to Canadian industrial partners' products and services. As such, Canadian companies will benefit significantly for increased revenue and improved competitiveness in the global market, and meanwhile create new jobs in the information technology sector. Thus it has the potential to make a lasting impact on Canada's economy.