CNS Core: Medium: Collaborative Research: Scalable Dissemination and Navigation of Video 360 Content for Personalized Viewing

360度视频是虚拟现实（VR）的一种形式，可以让观众以身临其境的方式体验媒体内容。与传统视频不同的是，360度视频是用一种特殊的摄像机录制的，它可以从几乎所有的方向捕捉到周围的完整环境。观看这种视频的观众可以通过使用常规显示器上的指向设备或使用头戴式设备通过头部运动来选择他们正在观看的方向。这种新格式允许观众在观看视频时改变观看方向，例如，观众可以从场地的多个角度观看体育赛事。然而，在互联网上大规模地创建、存储和传播360度视频带来了巨大的挑战。这些挑战是该项目的重点，该项目将开发一个名为mi360World的新系统和框架，使互联网上的任何用户都能顺利地传输360度视频并与之互动。如果成功，该项目将显著改善360度视频传输，并将带来新的、更丰富的教育、培训和娱乐体验。它还将有助于培养一批新的多媒体系统研究人员和实践者。通过互联网向全球分布的用户提供高质量、个性化的360度视频的机制是一个尚未解决的科学问题，它涉及以下挑战：1)超高带宽；2)超低延时；3)视图适应（用户头部运动）；4)复杂的视频元数据和传输；5)视频体验质量（QoE）。多年来，传统视频QoE得到了广泛的研究；然而，对于360度视频QoE的贡献却知之甚少，需要构思和衡量新的指标。拟议的mi360World系统包含三个主要的研究重点来解决上述挑战：视频创作重点，通过生成导航图和电影规则来实现个性化观看，同时保持高QoE并减少晕屏。导航图的构建和电影规则的包含是该项目的主要创新，并被封装在360视频的三层元数据表示中：传输层、语义层和交互式故事讲述层。第二个重点是将360度视频的可扩展分发给全球不同的观众，利用导航图和电影规则进行高效的过渡预测预取和缓存。第三个重点是质量质量，目标是设计新的质量质量指标和评估方法来评估晕动症。系统架构和算法将通过模拟、仿真和使用试验台进行基准测试来广泛评估，以评估所提议的研究的成功。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

360 video is a form of virtual reality (VR) that allows the viewer to experience media content in an immersive fashion. In contrast to traditional video, 360 video is recorded with a special camera that captures the complete surroundings from almost all directions. Viewers consuming such a video can select the direction they are looking at by using a pointing device on a regular display or through head movement using a head-mounted device. This new format allows a viewer to change their viewing direction when watching the video, e.g., a viewer can watch a sporting event from multiple perspectives on the field. However, creating, storing, and disseminating 360 videos at a large scale over the Internet poses significant challenges. These challenges are the focus of this project, which will develop a new system and framework, called mi360World, to enable smooth delivery of and interaction with 360 video by any user on the Internet. This project, if successful, will significantly improve 360 video delivery, and will enable new and much richer educational, training and entertainment experiences. It will also help train a new class of multimedia systems researchers and practitioners. The mechanisms for delivering a high-quality, personalized 360 video over the Internet to a globally distributed set of users is an unsolved scientific problem that entails the following challenges: 1) Ultra-high Bandwidth; 2) Ultra-low Delay; 3) View Adaptation (to user head movement); 4) Complex video metadata and delivery; 5) Video Quality of Experience (QoE). Traditional video QoE has seen extensive research over the years; however, what contributes to 360 video QoE is much less understood and will require conceiving of and measuring new metrics. The proposed mi360World system incorporates three major research thrusts to address the above challenges: A video creation thrust that enables personalized viewing by generating navigation graphs and cinematographic rules, while maintaining a high QoE and reducing cybersickness. The construction of navigation graphs and inclusion of cinematographic rules represent the main innovations of this project, and are encapsulated in a three-layered metadata representation of the 360 video: a transport layer, a semantic layer, and an interactive story-telling layer. The second thrust focuses on scalable distribution of 360 videos to a global set of diverse viewers, utilizing navigation graphs and cinematographic rules for highly efficient transition-predictive prefetching and caching. The third thrust focuses on QoE and has the goal of devising novel QoE metrics and evaluation methods to assess cybersickness. System architectures and algorithms will be extensively evaluated through simulation, emulation, and benchmarking using testbeds to assess the success of the proposed research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.