Title of thesis Content Based Processing and Modelling of MPEG-1 Video Streams
Position: Student
Degree awarded Ph.D.
Duration of study (October 1995-1999)
Financial support Etisalat College of Engineering, UAE
Supervisor Prof. M. Ghanbari
Current affiliation Assistant Professor, Etisalat College of Engineering, Sharjah,
UAE, e-mail: dawood@ece.ac.ae
The thesis investigate the spatio-temporal feature of video sequences and their impact on the MPEG-1 coded video traffic. Characterisation of the temporal domain has shown that the distribution of shot durations within a video-clip follows a second order gamma function, while the spatial content of the shots can be classified into nine different categories based on the shot’s texture and motion levels. Based on these characteristics a Content-based model (CBM) is proposed which can be used to model the traffic of MPEG-1 coded video. Furthermore, it can produce the traffic of long video-clips which contain many homogeneous video shots of diverse characteristics. Since the process of extracting the homogeneous shots from long video-clips, followed by the process of classifying these shots into nine categories were used extensively in the CBM investigation, the automation of these two processes is considered in this thesis. A scene cut detection algorithm is developed to be applied directly on the MPEG-1 coded video bit streams, without the need of decoding the bit streams. Also, an algorithm is developed to classify the MPEG-1 coded shots into nine categories based on their texture and motion levels. Both algorithms were fast since they rely on the information of the bit rate of I pictures and the statistics of macroblock coding mode types in P and B pictures of the MPEG-1 compression algorithm. Finally, an algorithm for the detection of ATM cell-type carrying MPEG-1 coded video is developed. The algorithm has the feature of not processing the cell payload, while it is an intelligent method since it considers the video content activity level within the coded pictures.
Publications
Journal Papers
Ali M. Dawood and M. Ghanbari, MPEG video model based on scene content. IEE
Electronic letters, 34(9): 868-870, April 1998.
Ali M. Dawood and M. Ghanbari, Content based MPEG video traffic modeling. IEEE transactions on Multimedia, 1(1): 77-87, March 1999.

Conference Papers:
Ali M. Dawood and M. Ghanbari, Identification of packetised MPEG picture type. In the proceeding of IEEE international Conference on Audiovisual services over packet network, AVSPN’97, pages 67-69, Aberdeen – UK, September 1997.
Ali M. Dawood and M. Ghanbari, MPEG video modeling based on scene description.
In the proceedings of IEEE international Conference on Image Processing, ICIP’98,
Chicago – USA, October 1998.
Ali M. Dawood and M. Ghanbari, Direct scene cut detection from MPEG coded bit streams. In the digest of IEE colloquium on multimedia databases and MPEG-7, No.
99/056, London – UK , January 1999.
Ali M. Dawood and M. Ghanbari, Clear scene cut detection directly from MPEG bit streams. In the proceedings of the IEE seventh international conference on tn image processing and its applications, IPA’99, Manchester – UK, July 1999.
Ali M. Dawood and M. Ghanbari, Scene content classification from MPEG coded bit streams. In the proceedings of IEEE international workshop on multimedia signal processing, MMSP’99, Copenhagen – Denmark, September 1999.
Ali M. Dawood and M. Ghanbari, Scene cut detection from MPEG video streams coded without B pictures. In the proceedings of IEEE international conference in
Acoustics, Speech and Signal processing, ICASSP’01, Salt Lake City, Utah-USA,
May 2001.