Multimedia Services in Intelligent Environments: Advanced Tools and Methodologies

417 Pages·2008·10.2 MB·English

by  Lakhmi C. Jain (auth.), George A. Tsihrintzis, Professor Dr. George A. Tsihrintzis, Professor Dr. Lakhmi C. Jain (eds.)

George A. Tsihrintzis and Lakhmi C. Jain (Eds.)
Multimedia Services in Intelligent Environments
Studies in Computational Intelligence, Volume 120
Editor-in-chief
Prof. Janusz Kacprzyk
Systems Research Institute
Polish Academy of Sciences
ul. Newelska 6
01-447 Warsaw
Poland
E-mail:
George A. Tsihrintzis
Lakhmi C. Jain
(Eds.)
Multimedia Services
in Intelligent Environments
Advanced Tools and Methodologies
With 153 Figures and 24 Tables
123
Professor Dr. George A. Tsihrintzis Professor Dr. Lakhmi C. Jain
Department of Informatics School of Electrical & Information
University of Piraeus Engineering
Karaoli-Dimitriou Str. 80 University of South Australia
185 34 Piraeus KES Centre
Greece Mawson Lakes Campus
Preface
Multimedia services involve processing, transmission and retrieval of multiple
forms of information. Multimedia services have gained momentum in the past
few years due to the easy availability of computing power and storage media.
Society is demanding human-like intelligent behaviour, such as adaptation and
generalization, from machines every day. With this view in mind, researchers
are working on fusing intelligent paradigms such as artificial neural networks,
swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, evolutionary computing and
multiagents with multimedia services.
Artificial neural networks use neurons, interconnected using various
schemes, for fusing learning in multimedia-based systems. Evolutionary com-
puting techniques are used in tasks such as optimization. Typical multiagent
systems are based on Belief-Desire-Intention model and act on behalf of the
users. Typical examples of intelligent multimedia services include digital li-
braries, e-learning and teaching, e-government, e-commerce, e-entertainment,
e-health and e-legal services.
This book includes 15 chapters on advanced tools and methodologies
pertaining to the multimedia services. The authors and reviewers have con-
tributed immensely to this research-oriented book. We believe that this re-
search volume will be valuable to professors, researchers and students of all
disciplines, such as computer science, engineering and management.
We express our sincere thanks to Springer-Verlag for their wonderful edi-
torial support.
Greece George A. Tsihrintzis,
Australia, 2008 Lakhmi C. Jain,
Contents
1 Multimedia Services in Intelligent Environments:
An Introduction
George A. Tsihrintzis and Lakhmi C. Jain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Audiovisual Compression for Multimedia Services
in Intelligent Environments
Christos Grecos and Ming Yuan Yang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3 Generalized Recognition of Sound Events:
Approaches and Applications
Ilyas Potamitis and Todor Ganchev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4 An Overview of Speech/Music Discrimination Techniques
in the Context of Audio Recordings
Aggelos Pikrakis, Theodoros Giannakopoulos, and Sergios Theodoridis . . 81
5 Multichannel Audio Coding for Multimedia Services
in Intelligent Environments
Athanasios Mouchtaris and Panagiotis Tsakalides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6 Temporal Video Transcoding for Multimedia Services
Francesca Lonetti and Francesca Martelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
7 Individualization of Content-Based Image Retrieval
Systems via Objective Feature Subset Selection
D.N. Sotiropoulos, A.S. Lampropoulos, and G.A. Tsihrintzis . . . . . . . . . . . 181
8 Audio-Visual Multimedia Retrieval on Mobile Devices
Iftikhar Ahmad and Moncef Gabbouj . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
9 Cryptography and Data Hiding for Media Security
Alessandro Piva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
VIII Contents
10 Multimedia Information Security
Constantinos Patsakis and Nikolaos Alexandris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
11 Multimedia Services Applied to Noise and Hearing
Monitoring and Measuring
Andrzej Czyzewski, Bozena Kostek, and Jozef Kotus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
12 Vision-Based Tracking for Mobile Augmented Reality
Fakhreddine Ababsa, Madjid Maidi, Jean-Yves Didier,
and Malik Mallem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
13 Rights Management and Licensing Multimedia Services
Renato Iannella . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
14 Automated Lecture Services
Cha Zhang and Yong Rui . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
15 Recommender Services in Scientific Digital Libraries
Markus Franke, Andreas Geyer-Schulz, and Andreas W. Neumann . . . . . 377
1
Multimedia Services in Intelligent
Environments: An Introduction
1 2
George A. Tsihrintzis and Lakhmi C. Jain
1
Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus
2
School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of South Australia
Summary. This chapter presents an overview of multimedia services in intelligent
environments and outlines the contents of the book. Multimedia services is the
term chosen to describe services which rely on the coordinated and secure storage,
processing, transmission, and retrieval of multiple forms of information. The term
refers to various levels of data processing and includes applications areas such as
digital libraries, e-learning, e-government, e-commerce, e-entertainment, e-health,
or e-legal services. Besides the introductory chapter, this book includes 14 addi-
tional chapters. Nine of these chapters attempt to cover various aspects of low level
data processing in multimedia services in intelligent environments, such as storage,
recognition and classification, transmission, information retrieval, and information
securing. Four additional chapters present intermediate level multimedia services
in noise and hearing monitoring and measuring, augmented reality, automated lec-
ture rooms and rights management and licensing. Finally, Chap. 15 is devoted to a
high-level intelligent recommender service in scientific digital libraries.
1.1 Introduction
The coordinated and secure storage, processing, transmission, and retrieval of
multiple forms of information, such as audio, image, video, animation, graph-
ics, and text, has become a vibrant field of research and development over
the last decade. The umbrella term usually coined to refer to this research
activity is Multimedia Systems (Lat. Multum + Medium) and seems to have
been borrowed from the fine arts [1–4]. Alternatively, the terms mixed media,
or rich media, or interactive media, or integrated media are considered as
(more or less) synonymous to the term multimedia. On the other hand, the
term hypermedia may be considered as an application of multimedia in which
multiple forms of information content, such as audio, image, video, anima-
tion, graphics, and text and hyperlinks, are all present and intertwined in a
non-linear medium of information [1–4].
Even though the term “multimedia systems” is still vaguely used to a large
extent, it is nowadays understood that the term implies systems that perform
G.A. Tsihrintzis and L.C. Jain: Multimedia Services in Intelligent Environments: An
Introduction, Studies in Computational Intelligence (SCI) 120, 1–8 (2008)
www.springerlink.com ⃝c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008
2 G.A. Tsihrintzis and L.C. Jain
various tasks of handling pieces of information that may be of diverse forms,
but are linked together into a single entity. Thus, the term “integrated media
systems” may be more accurate. However, the term “multimedia systems” is
still more widespread.
Early multimedia systems are to be found in fine art performances [1–4].
Later on, computers with CD-ROM drives were often called “multimedia
computers,” as they carried the ability to store, process and visualized
data in various forms. Today, multimedia systems have become very com-
mon and are used in various applications. New processing paradigms and
software/hardware technology advances have allowed the development of mul-
timedia systems capable of storing, processing, transmitting, retrieving, and
securing vast amounts of data in various forms.
At a time when computers are more widespread than ever and computer
users range from highly qualified scientists to non-computer-expert profession-
als and may include people with special needs, interactivity, personalization
and adaptivity have become a necessity in modern multimedia systems [5].
Modern intelligent multimedia systems need to be interactive not only through
classical modes of interaction where the user inputs information through a key-
board or mouse. They must also support other modes of interaction, such as
visual or lingual computer–user interfaces, which render them more attractive,
user friendlier, more human-like and more informative.
On the other hand, the solution of “one-fits-all” is no longer applicable
to wide ranges of users of various backgrounds and needs. Therefore, one
important goal of many intelligent multimedia systems is their ability to adapt
dynamically to their users [5].
To achieve these goals, intelligent multimedia systems need to evolve at
all levels of processing. This includes further research and development of
low-level data processing for information security, compression, transmission,
clustering, classification and retrieval [6–19]. This research leads into the
development of new and more efficient intermediate-level intelligent multime-
dia systems for such applications, as information tracking, human and object
monitoring, home and office automation, environmental information systems,
or systems for rights management and licensing. Such intermediate-level in-
telligent multimedia systems are the building blocks of high-level intelligent
multimedia services for such application areas, digital libraries [20], e-learning
[21], e-government [22], e-commerce [23], e-entertainment [24], e-health [25],
or e-legal services [26] (Fig. 1.1).
1.2 Intelligent Multimedia Services
Multimedia Services based on multimedia systems have made significant
progress in recent times, as they arise in various areas including, but not
limited to, advertisement, art, business, creative industries, education, enter-
tainment, engineering, medicine, mathematics, scientific research and other
1 Multimedia Services in Intelligent Environments: An Introduction 3
e-entertainment, e-health, e-legal services,
e-commerce, e-government, e-learning, digital libraries
Information tracking, human and object monitoring,
automated home, office and lecture rooms, noise
monitoring, intelligent environmental information
systems, rights management and licensing
Compression, processing, transmission, security,
clustering, recognition, classification, retrieval.
Fig. 1.1. Several levels of intelligent multimedia systems and services
applications. The growth rate of multimedia services has become explosive,
as technological progress is forced to match consumer hunger for content.
A typical example of multimedia service growth is the activity in mo-
bile software. The term mobile services refers to services requested by a user
of a mobile network through his/her mobile device. Early stage mobile ser-
vices were centered on voice communication (i.e. telephony) and were available
only in telecommunication networks. However, with consumers requesting that
modern mobile devices offer more than just voice communication, mobile soft-
ware has already begun to provide access to a vast array of data and services.
In general, mobile services, can be classified in several ways such as voice/call
services (e.g. call forwarding, call waiting, calling line identification, missed
call notification, or conference call service), location-based services (e.g. locat-
ing a street address or business or providing navigation information), trans-
action services (e.g. mobile banking or payments made directly over mobile
phones), advertising services, and multimedia mobile services [27–30].
Mobile multimedia services provide means for delivering multimedia con-
tent and information between two mobile stations or between a mobile station
and an operator. Today, mobile technology is capable of offering its users com-
mercial opportunities for creation and sharing of multimedia. Thus, a variety
of mobile multimedia services give users the ability to use their device not
just for telecommunication purposes, but also for a variety of other purposes,
such as entertainment, learning, medicine, or advertisement [31].
One of the early mobile multimedia services was the ability to create com-
plex messages with multimedia content, audio, image and video. This allowed
mobile users not only to communicate via short messages (SMS’s), but also