Abstract

We explore optimization strategies and resulting performance of two stream-based video applications, video texture and color tracker, on a cluster of SMPs. The two applications are representative of a class of emerging applications, which we call “stream-based applications”, that are sensitive to both latency of individual results and overall throughput. Such applications require non-trivial parallelization techniques in order to improve both latency and throughput, given that the stream data emanates from a limited set of sources (exactly one in the two applications studied) and that the distribution of the data cannot be done a priori.We suggest techniques that address in a coordinated fashion the problems of data distribution and work partitioning. We believe the two problems are related and need to be addressed together. We have parallelized two applications using the Stampede cluster programming system that provides abstractions for implementing time-and throughput-sensitive applications elegantly and efficiently. For the Video Textures application we show that we can achieve a speedup of 24.26 on a 112 processor cluster. For the Color Tracker application, where latency is more crucial, we identify the extent of data parallelism that ensures that the slowest member of the pipeline is no longer the bottleneck for achieving a decent frame rate.

ABSTRACT

We present a novel technique for texture synthesis using optimization. We define a Markov Random Field (MRF)-based similarity metric for measuring the quality of synthesized texture with respect to a given input sample. This allows us to formulate the synthesis problem as minimization of an energy function, which is optimized using an Expectation Maximization (EM)-like algorithm. In contrast to most example-based techniques that do region-growing, ours is a joint optimization approach that progressively refines the entire texture. Additionally, our approach is ideally suited to allow for controllable synthesis of textures. Specifically, we demonstrate controllability by animating image textures using flow fields. We allow for general two-dimensional flow fields that may dynamically change over time. Applications of this technique include dynamic texturing of fluid animations and texture-based flow visualization.

ABSTRACT

We present an approach for tracking varying number of objects through both temporally and spatially significant occlusions. Our method builds on the idea of object permanence to reason about occlusions. To this end, tracking is performed at both the region level and the object level. At the region level, a customized genetic algorithm is used to search for optimal region tracks. This limits the scope of object trajectories. At the object level, each object is located based on adaptive appearance models, spatial distributions and inter-occlusion relationships. The proposed architecture is capable of tracking objects even in the presence of long periods of full occlusions. We demonstrate the viability of this approach by experimenting on several videos of a user interacting with a variety of objects on a desktop.

The Digital Video Special Effects class of Spring 2004 (CS 4480) presented their final productions on April 28, 2005 in CoCB 16 at 2:00p. Students showed and discussed the short video segments (less than 1 minutes each) that they have produced to showcase the technical special effects they have generated during the course of the semester.