Entering the Digital World – Technologies behind Audiovisual Content Analysis and Representation.

General description

This year our summer course will be in cooperation with the department ETRO. This is the department "Electronics and Information Processing" of the Faculty of Applied Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

Recent years digital technologies have massively entered our daily lives. As the processing power of integrated circuits increased, digital memories are offering huge storage spaces, battery technology improved, more advanced and even mobile multimedia devices capable of reproducing high quality content became available. This BEST course will focus on the underlying digital signal processing algorithms enabling these multimedia services.

Academic information

Content and topics:

The first part of the course will focus on the basics of image processing: colour spaces, image formats, image transformations (discrete cosine transform, wavelets), etc. Thereafter the efficient representation/coding of visual data will be discussed. This section will be a tutorial on compression standards/tools like JBIG, GIF, JPEG, PNG, JPEG2000, MPEG-1,2,4 (Baseline/AVC). Besides, natural image and video coding also coding of 3D graphics is a highly challenging area. You will discover the basic visualisation technologies used in games and movies …. Since visual information is always accompanied by audio, a next section will discuss the secrets of digital audio processing and explain how the audio codec in a mobile phone works, the principles behind MP3 and AAC, etc. Coding content however is one step, transmitting it is yet another. Hence, in short course computer networks are introduced up to a level that allows for a basic understanding of the technology behind streaming video. Finally, having more and more visual content available, it becomes apparent that we would also like that a computer can understand what he is visualising. This is where audiovisual content analysis comes into the game. You will get an extensive overview of applied techniques ranging from low-level analysis tools, detecting colour, texture etc. up to high-level scene interpretation.

Learning goals and objectives:

Examination type:

The course will be concluded with an examination.The exam will be a challenge test.

Information for applicants

Selection criteria:

Practical arrangements

All of the following are covered by the event fee:

Lodging:

You will be lodged in an International House, comparable with a youth hostel. This house is situated approximately 4 kilometres from our university campus. Transportation to and from the house is done by public transportation or by cars, but this still means that you will have to get up quite early in order to arrive on time for the lessons. It also means that you won't have the chance to go to your room during the day (you leave the hostel in the morning and you only come back in the late evening). Don't worry you'll have plenty to do during the day! In the youth hostel you will be divided into 5 rooms for 4 persons. Sheets will be provided; you only need to bring towels and soap etc. There are two big bathrooms: one for the guys and for the girls. During the weekend of 10th and 11th September, we will make a weekend trip to a place where we will stay for 2 nights. Don't forget to bring a sleeping bag with you for this weekend.

Meals:

A sweet (jam, marmalade, chocolate paste) breakfast will be served at the university campus. The organisers will provide the food and drinks. The lunch will be in the university restaurant (you will receive tickets from the organisers). Here you can choose between several normal dishes and one vegetarian dish. Soup and dessert are also included. For dinner we will usually eat sandwiches. Each year participants (especially from the South) complain about the fact that we eat too early. Please people you come to Belgium to get to know the Belgian culture and way of living. Most Belgians have lunch around 12h30 and dinner around 18h, this will be no different during our summer course.

Transportation:

During the SC most trips will be done by public transportation. If this is not possible, we will use cars. The shorter trips to the centre of Brussels (our university is approximately 2 km from the centre) will be done by subway.