A Semantic Communication and VVC Based Hybrid Video Coding System

Requirements of next-generation video applications are becoming a challenge for conventional video coding systems, although they have evolved over decades to accommodate the most demanding of current video applications. Semantic communications, built on the concept of transmitting just the semantics...

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Main Authors: Prabhath Samarathunga, Yasith Ganearachchi, Thanuj Fernando, Adhuran Jayasingam, Indika Alahapperuma, Anil Fernando
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2024-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10528271/
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author Prabhath Samarathunga
Yasith Ganearachchi
Thanuj Fernando
Adhuran Jayasingam
Indika Alahapperuma
Anil Fernando
author_facet Prabhath Samarathunga
Yasith Ganearachchi
Thanuj Fernando
Adhuran Jayasingam
Indika Alahapperuma
Anil Fernando
author_sort Prabhath Samarathunga
collection DOAJ
description Requirements of next-generation video applications are becoming a challenge for conventional video coding systems, although they have evolved over decades to accommodate the most demanding of current video applications. Semantic communications, built on the concept of transmitting just the semantics of a message and allowing the receiver to reconstruct the message based on a shared context, is a non-conventional approach being considered to overcome these challenges and improve performance of video coding systems. In this paper, a first such semantic communication-based video coding system in hybrid mode is proposed, which uses an autoencoder-based semantic encoder for inter coding, augmented by the intra coding capabilities of Versatile Video Coding (VVC) to encode key frames that form the context for the semantic communication and the residuals for improving the fidelity of the output frames. For a range of videos with differing levels of complexity, the proposed system consistently outperforms High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and Advanced Video Coding (AVC) in terms of rate distortion metrics quantified by Bjontegaard Delta Rates. It also outperforms Versatile Video Coding with videos with low or high complexity, but slightly falls behind with videos with medium complexity, which can be improved by addressing the open research areas that stem from this work. The proposed system demonstrates the potential of semantic communication based video coding systems to consistently outperform state-of-the-art conventional video coding systems over a wide range video applications.
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spelling doaj-art-d87e491c639d4e03a25abcbc1d1773822025-08-20T03:31:23ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362024-01-0112792027922410.1109/ACCESS.2024.339917410528271A Semantic Communication and VVC Based Hybrid Video Coding SystemPrabhath Samarathunga0Yasith Ganearachchi1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8337-3739Thanuj Fernando2Adhuran Jayasingam3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1477-4395Indika Alahapperuma4https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4527-8570Anil Fernando5Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K.Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K.Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K.Wireless Media and Networking Research Group, Faculty of Engineering, Computing and the Environment, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, London, U.K.Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K.Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K.Requirements of next-generation video applications are becoming a challenge for conventional video coding systems, although they have evolved over decades to accommodate the most demanding of current video applications. Semantic communications, built on the concept of transmitting just the semantics of a message and allowing the receiver to reconstruct the message based on a shared context, is a non-conventional approach being considered to overcome these challenges and improve performance of video coding systems. In this paper, a first such semantic communication-based video coding system in hybrid mode is proposed, which uses an autoencoder-based semantic encoder for inter coding, augmented by the intra coding capabilities of Versatile Video Coding (VVC) to encode key frames that form the context for the semantic communication and the residuals for improving the fidelity of the output frames. For a range of videos with differing levels of complexity, the proposed system consistently outperforms High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and Advanced Video Coding (AVC) in terms of rate distortion metrics quantified by Bjontegaard Delta Rates. It also outperforms Versatile Video Coding with videos with low or high complexity, but slightly falls behind with videos with medium complexity, which can be improved by addressing the open research areas that stem from this work. The proposed system demonstrates the potential of semantic communication based video coding systems to consistently outperform state-of-the-art conventional video coding systems over a wide range video applications.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10528271/Autoencodersdeep neural networkssemantic communicationvideo codingvideo communication
spellingShingle Prabhath Samarathunga
Yasith Ganearachchi
Thanuj Fernando
Adhuran Jayasingam
Indika Alahapperuma
Anil Fernando
A Semantic Communication and VVC Based Hybrid Video Coding System
IEEE Access
Autoencoders
deep neural networks
semantic communication
video coding
video communication
title A Semantic Communication and VVC Based Hybrid Video Coding System
title_full A Semantic Communication and VVC Based Hybrid Video Coding System
title_fullStr A Semantic Communication and VVC Based Hybrid Video Coding System
title_full_unstemmed A Semantic Communication and VVC Based Hybrid Video Coding System
title_short A Semantic Communication and VVC Based Hybrid Video Coding System
title_sort semantic communication and vvc based hybrid video coding system
topic Autoencoders
deep neural networks
semantic communication
video coding
video communication
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10528271/
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