Introduction and teaching plan

Last update on: 24-12-2021

About this site

This website hosts all the information related to the course Video Encoding Systems taught at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, as part of its Engineering Audiovisual Systems degree.

It aims to make it more comfortable for both students and teachers to manage, modify and share the course information. If you see any mistake, typo, or you found information that could complement what is showcased on this site, feel free to make a pull request with your proposal using the button at the bottom of the pages.

Additionally, it opens the knowledge to anyone interested in it. If you are not enrolled in the course, be free to roam around the site and learn as much as you want! But of course, you will not get any certificate or evaluation.

Expected learnings

After completing this course and assimilating everything to offer, you should be able to:

  • Apply knowledge of video coding systems to solve problems that may arise in engineering.

  • Identify and model complex systems. Make qualitative analyzes and approximations, establishing the uncertainty of the results. Raise hypotheses and experimental methods to validate them. Identify key components and set commitments and priorities.

  • Apply the skills acquired to carry out tasks autonomously. Identify the need for lifelong learning and develop your strategy for doing so.

Contents

  • T1: JPEG i JPEG2000
  • T2: MPEG i MPEG2
  • T3: MPEG4, h264 & Broadcasting standards
  • T4: Future in codecs

These contents are available on this website and in the Aula Global in the University website. Additionally, the teacher of this course, has recorded some video lessons to accompany the written theory, which are also available on this site.

Prerequisites

This course is part of the 4th year of an engineering degree, so it would be ideal to learn beforehand all the knowledge that it implies. Nevertheless, the most important previous information needed is:

  • Basics in programming (ideally Python)
  • Basics in signal processing

Technical requirements

There are some technical requirements to follow the course:

  1. Having a Debian-link Linux distribution (Ubuntu recommended). You can either install it natively or use a virtual machine. The first is advised since some exercises require considerable processing power, and would be too slow in a virtual machine.

It is also possible to use the Mackintosh terminal.

  1. Install an IDE for Python. Some examples are PyCharm or Atom. Search for linters for your preferred IDE and use the PEP-8 conventions.

  2. If you are a student at UPF: Have a Github account. Be sure to include your full name in the profile. Also, it is preferable to use your laptops instead of the university ones, to avoid issues with permits.

Teaching Methods

The subject is composed of theory, seminars, and practices.

Theory sessions will introduce video encoding and decoding concepts to be used in seminars and practices, in a hands-on way, and with software programming.

Students will understand better the encoding and they will be able to create their encoding systems, as well as to evaluate the results. Students will work in groups and individually.

Evaluation

This section only addresses students enrolled in the university course.

The evaluation in this part of the subject is determined by:

  • 50% Theory (Final exam)
  • 50% Labs (That we will work on both on seminars and practice sessions)

This course is joined together with the Audio Encoding Systems course. To pass, a minimum of 6 out of 10 is needed in each of the blocks of both subjects.

For the theory blocks, there will be a joint exam in December. It will be scored out of 10 points, 5 points for the audio block, and 5 points for the video one.

If a student fails the ordinary call, there will be an extraordinary one in July to recover the subject. In the subject recovery, the student will have an exam where all 4 blocks of the subject will be evaluated.

Lecturers reserve the right to offer the student a research project as a substitution for the exam. In that case, the student won’t be able to achieve a higher mark of 6 out of 10, with now a 5 being the mínimum required to pass. If the final mark is higher than 6 out of 10, it will be truncated to 6.

With that being said, let's start!

Bibliography

The main reference of the course is:

  • Image and Video Compression for Multimedia Engineering. Authors: Yun Q. Shin, Huifang Sun.