Showing papers by "Marco Furini published in 2004"
19 Apr 2004
TL;DR: This work proposes a very simple approach to providing a karaoke-like service over any audio device that can play out mp3 files, as no additional files, beyond the mp3 file, are necessary.
Abstract: The large usage of multimedia portable devices has contributed to a rapid increase in the demand for multimedia entertainment services. We focus on the karaoke service: several systems have been proposed but they are too difficult to be used directly over audio devices. Conversely, we propose a very simple approach to providing a karaoke-like service over any audio device that can play out mp3 files. Our approach is essentially new, as no additional files, beyond the mp3 file, are necessary. A simple description language has been designed to characterize audio-text timing synchronizations, which are transparently stored inside the mp3 file. The effectiveness of our approach is proved through a developed Java mp3 player. The simplicity of our approach along with Java portability allow a straightforward use of our player over any OS and over any audio device that supports Java applications.
18 citations
29 Nov 2004
TL;DR: This paper proposes a video frame dropping mechanism that takes into consideration the perceived quality of both audio and video play out, and shows that by taking into account only the video playout quality, audio problems arise very frequently.
Abstract: Video streaming applications are more and more present in our life, but despite the advances of network technologies, several users experience QoS problems. This is mainly due to the high bandwidth requirements of these applications that contrasts with the network bandwidth limitation. To mitigate these QoS problems, video frame dropping mechanisms are often used for adapting the video stream to the network conditions. The selection of the video frames to drop is done considering the perceived quality of the video play out; audio perception is not considered in the selection process. In this paper, we show that by taking into account only the video play out quality, audio problems arise very frequently. Hence, we propose a video frame dropping mechanism that takes into consideration the perceived quality of both audio and video play out. A comparison with other video frame dropping techniques is carried out and experimental results show that, although the video play out quality is similar, the audio play out quality is completely different. Our mechanism slightly affects the audio quality, while other techniques strongly affect it. Therefore, by using our mechanism, benefits are remarkable.
7 citations