View-dependent, scalable texture streaming in 3-D QoS with MPEG-4 visual texture coding

Multimedia applications are characterized by high resource demands (computing power, memory, network bandwidth, and power consumption). Efficient implementations aim at reducing these resources to a minimum, which is of the utmost importance for small, low-cost terminals in low-bandwidth networks. Resource savings can also be obtained by content adaptation without impeding the quality of the decoded audio-visual media. In this context, the paper analyzes texture adaptation and streaming for three-dimensional applications, using MPEG-4´s Visual Texture Coding tool, in conjunction with eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based description techniques. Augmented features for content adaptation are supported, such as region selection, accompanied by resolution and SNR settings. As a result, quality is optimized for the terminal´s computing capabilities and display resolution, taking the user´s viewing conditions into account. Moreover, the instantaneous bandwidth utilization is highly reduced in streaming scenarios.