A Umist researcher claims to have overcome the cost/bandwidth
conundrum.
Broadband faces a fundamental problem: the more successful it is,
the more people will use it, and the slower it will become. This
has obvious implications for the success of mobile video
applications such as those currently being hyped by mobile operator
3.
For the past three years, Keith Ferguson has researching how to
make video for low-bandwidth mobile phones acceptable. Now, with
backing from BTI's Invest UK DTI/Foreign Office initiative and
Umist Ventures, a company called Video & Image Coding
Specialists (Vics) has been set up to develop his research into a
commercial product.
Ferguson became interested in the concept of video for mobile
phones around the time 3G was first being pushed as the next big
thing for mobile networks. His main focus was the telecoms problems
of the Third World. "While the telco infrastructure in the Third
World is sophisticated, coverage and capacity on the networks was
low," he explained.
Part of the problem was environmental, with cells for mobile phones
having to cover large geographic regions. But there were also
economical barriers to its adoption. "In Europe, bandwidth is
expensive. Most of the Third World cannot not afford the 3G
licences," said Ferguson.
The problem with bandwidth is that the more people that use it, the
less bandwidth each user gets. One of the ways European operators
have prevented their networks from grinding to halt with too many
users is by charging a premium for faster networks.
But fast access is little use without applications, and the killer
app touted by the mobile phone industry for 3G and GPRS is
streaming video services, such as highlights of the football or
news. The problem for the phone operators is the trade-off between
picture quality and available bandwidth. At Umist, Ferguson tackled
the problem of how to give users acceptable quality video on their
handsets for the minimum bandwidth overhead.
The technology
"My research project was to look at how to create low bit rate
video so that you can provide value for money on a mobile phone
network," he said.
Coming from an electrical engineering background, Ferguson had
experience of still image compression using programmable hardware
designs. Current designs for video compression throw away video
frames in order to keep the quality of the video at an acceptable
level. While such techniques may go unnoticed when there is little
change per frame, throwing away frames when a goal is about to be
scored is not going to be acceptable to a user if essential frames
relaying the path of the ball from the footballer to the back of
the net are missing.
Ferguson's research took him down a different path to video
nirvana. "I looked at how the brain perceives images. It is very
easy to spot a white ball on a green background, but put the same
ball among the crowd and it is impossible."
He began looking at visual patterns that could represent video. To
represent every image perfectly would require an infinite number of
visual patterns. But it is possible to fool the brain.
If you look at someone moving their hand across their face, for
instance, you do not need to see each finger in detail. The same is
true of a footballer chasing the ball across a pitch. It is not
necessary to depict the footballer's legs moving as clearly as the
ball. The brain will still perceive that his legs are moving.
So Ferguson researched patterns that could be used to approximate
moving images, allowing him to build an algorithm which he claims
is able to represent video using just a small number of visual
patterns.
The business
David Stead, managing director at Vics, believes the technology
developed from Ferguson's Umist research will offer ordinary users
a more acceptable form of video from their handsets than any rival
video service. Stead was able to demonstrate acceptable mobile
video streaming running over a standard GSM network, with bandwidth
of just 6kbps.
The company's unique selling point is that it has circumvented the
mobile operators and is speaking directly to content providers. The
commercial product, called Mobile Portal, allows end-users who own
a Sony Ericcson P800 or Nokia 7650/3650 to watch video streamed
from the company's website. Vics has developed a downloadable video
player that is currently available for Symbian- based
smartphones.
Companies can charge for video clips via "credits" supplied as a
premium-rate SMS message that consumers send to Vics.
Stead said, "We would like to see pricing in the region of 20p to
30p per video clip." A price point he said would be far cheaper
than the types of video services being touted by some 3G operators.
Priced in this way, Stead believes Vics could prove a winner among
ringtone firms looking for the next big opportunity.
www.videocoding.com
CV: Keith Ferguson
Keith Ferguson's upbringing in Africa developed his interest in
delivering quality video at low prices to offer Third World
countries the kind of access to technology enjoyed by First World
countries. This became the subject of his PhD.
While working on his PhD, Ferguson met David Stead, who was looking
for new technologies to develop commercially. During his time in
the UK, Ferguson found that large numbers of people requiring
access through a broadband delivery channel faced the same problems
as those encountered in the Third World, where fewer people are
trying to access technology, but through a much smaller narrowband
channel.
The frustrating user experience in both contexts is the same. This
is further exaggerated in the delivery of video to mobile phones.
Ferguson's research and postdoctoral engineering efforts have
culminated in producing a mobile video coding system that is now
being brought to market.
What is BTI?
British Trade International (BTI) is the government organisation
set up to support the UK's trade and investment strategy. It brings
together the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the
DTI on trade development and promotion of inward investment. BTI's
two operating units are Trade Partners UK, which helps UK companies
trading overseas, and Invest UK, which promotes the UK as an inward
investment location.
www.tradepartners.gov.uk
www.invest.uk.com
Getting wired: tell us the future
Research work being undertaken at universities today will change
the way we use IT, and Computer Weekly is on a mission to showcase
the cutting-edge IT research being conducted in the UK.
Computer Weekly would like to hear from researchers who think they
might have made a breakthrough. Each week we will feature
innovation in the field of IT, giving a glimpse of how technology
will evolve in the coming years.