EPFL

EPFL is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technologies, based in Lausanne. The Multimedia Signal Processing Group (MMSPG) of EPFL will be active in this project. EPFL has a large number of activities in multimedia and applied signal processing with unique expertise and infrastructure in Quality of Experience research and training. MMSPG is among pioneers in the field of Quality of Experience in Multimedia and the research group has been successful in producing over 100 scientific publications in this field alone. MMSPG has been involved in the assessment of all technology proposals for compression of image and video content to JPEG and MPEG standardization committees, including HEVC/H.265, 3DVC, JPEG-XR, JPEG-XT and SCC to mention a few among many others. EPFL possesses infrastructure for both laboratory-based and field-based QoE evaluations and they have been used notably for assessment of QoE in mobile media. EPFL also has a number of activities on QoE assessment through user sensing (focus of attention detection, viewers physiological signals analysis) in immersive and multimedia rich environments. MMSPG is experienced in designing and performing subjective tests for the aim of image and video quality assessment, electroencephalogram and other physiological signal processing and conducting user studies and possesses all the required equipment and fasciitis including a subjective test room in compliance with ITU-R BT. 500-11 recommendation, dense array EEG (256 channels) and physiological signal acquisition device. The results of these studies have been published in various conferences and journals. The group has recently participated in the following EU-funded projects: FP7 Petamedia and VideoSense.

EPFL has a long experience in image and video coding. It has been involved in standardization of major image and video compression algorithms including JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, JPEG XT, MPEG-2, H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC. EPFL has also been active in compression schemes other than in the framework of standardization, such as distributed video coding, High Dynamic Range coding and 3D image and video compression. EPFL is also a pioneer and a very active actor in evaluation of quality of experience and has been coordinator or major player in evaluation of all image and video compression standards both through subjective evaluations and objective metrics. Examples include evaluations of JPEG XR and JPEG XT standards, as well as evaluations of H.265/HEVC, MVC, 3DVC, SCC, and currently in MPEG-HDR/WCG video compression evaluations. EPFL has also designed, and implemented evaluations and comparisons between standard image and video coding algorithms and proprietary solutions such as VP8, HD-Photo, and VP9. EPFL has been the first to propose, design and implement a view dependent scalable coding scheme which is now part of the MPEG-4 standard. Current activities of EPFL in quality assessment include evaluation methodologies for immersive TV and assessment of sense of presence in future TV. The following projects in particular are currently carried out at EPFL and will have an impact on ImmersiaTV. EPFL leads the design and implementation of coding and encoding modules (T3.4). In addition, EPFL leads the standardization efforts in this project (T5.5).