SEQUOIA: Sustainability-driven high quality video compression and delivery

红杉项目是对经济上和环境上更可持续的高质量视频流的新的迫切需求的回应。项目活动旨在应对爆炸性的市场需求，并应对媒体部门在应对**网络媒体消费**激增所面临的挑战，网络媒体消费**对互联网服务构成**前所未有的压力**，同时也极大地**造成了媒体服务留下的环境足迹**。迫切需要视频流媒体的颠覆性创新-新的设备感知和交叉编解码器兼容的前/后处理、编码和交付工具-以满足对在线视频不断增长的减少处理、能源和存储需求的需求。Sequoia的科学创新将产生一个“**深度感知优化器**”，利用：(I)心理视觉/感知模型的最新进展(Ii)尖端AI/深度学习和(Iii)最先进的视频编码、优化视频服务的质量、比特率和环境影响。基于合作伙伴在感知质量优化、视频前后处理、视频编码和深度学习方面的专业知识，Sequoia将超越最先进的水平，开发基于AI的新视频质量**分析、流媒体和编码。**因此，Sequoia的愿景是开发一个自动化的**深度感知优化器**，在媒体分发链的所有阶段产生影响。该项目将展示其在可操作和便携编码器设计方面的结果，既适用于视频点播(VoD)，也适用于直播应用程序和编码社交媒体流。这种科学创新的价值将使整个行业受益，展示了实现超高清(UHD)内容可持续分发的技术，同时限制了视频对互联网流量的影响，并降低了分发成本。除了商业利益，项目成果将通过监测和主动降低媒体价值链所有阶段的能源消耗**来支持**环保解决方案**。该项目为期24个月，汇集了产业界(ISIZE和BBC)和学术界(QMUL)的合作伙伴。合作伙伴带来了**人工智能、视频编码标准化、自适应视频前/后处理和流、感知优化和可互操作软件架构**方面的独特专业知识，共同努力实现这些具有挑战性的目标。

The SEQUOIA project is a response to the emerging imperative needs for more financially and environmentally-sustainable high-quality video streaming. Project activities are aimed at addressing exploding market demands, and address the challenges faced by the media sector in tackling the **surge in online media consumption**, which is posing **unprecedented stress on Internet services**, while also greatly **contributing to the environmental footprint left behind by media services**.Disruptive innovation for video streaming is urgently needed - new pre/post processing, encoding, and delivery tools that are device-aware and cross-codec compatible - to meet growing demands for online video reducing processing, energy and storage requirements. The SEQUOIA scientific innovation will result in a "**deep perceptual optimiser**" leveraging: (i) latest advances in psychovisual/perceptual models (ii) cutting-edge AI/deep-learning and (iii) state-of-the-art video coding, optimising quality, bitrate and environmental impact of video services.Building on the partners' expertise on perceptual quality optimisation, video pre/post processing, video coding and deep learning, SEQUOIA will go beyond state-of-the-art to develop new AI-based video quality **analytics, streaming and encoding.** As a result, the SEQUOIA vision is to develop an automated **deep perceptual optimiser** to make an impact throughout all stages in the media distribution chain.The project will demonstrate its results on operational and portable encoder designs, applicable both to Video on Demand (VOD) as well as live applications and encoding social media streams. The value of such scientific innovation will lead to benefits for the whole sector, demonstrating technology to enable sustainable distribution of Ultra High-Definition (UHD) content, while limiting the impact of video on internet traffic and reducing distribution costs. Extending beyond the commercial benefits, the project outcomes will be devised to support **environmentally conscious solutions by monitoring and proactively reducing energy consumption** at all stages within the media value chain.Extending over a period of 24 months, the project brings together industrial (iSIZE and BBC) and academic (QMUL) partners. The partners bring unique expertise on **AI, video coding standardisation, adaptive video pre/post processing and streaming, perceptual optimisations and interoperable software architectures**, to collaboratively work towards these challenging objectives.