ABSTRACT
With video being a ubiquitous part of modern multimedia communications, new functionalities in addition to the compression as provided by conventional video coding standards like H.261, MPEG-1, H.262, MPEG-2, H.263, and H.264 are required for new applications. Applications like
content-based storage and retrieval have to allow access to video data based on object descriptions, where objects are described by texture, shape, and motion. Studio and television postproduction applications require editing of video content with objects represented by texture and shape. For collaborative scene visualization like augmented reality, we need to place video objects into the scene. Mobile multimedia applications require content-based interactivity and content-based scalability in order to allocate limited bit rate or limited terminal resources to fit the individual needs. Security applications benefit from content-based scalability as well. All these applications share one common requirement: video content has to be easily accessible on an object basis. MPEG-4 Visual enables this functionality. The main part of this chapter describes MPEG-4 shape coding, the content-based interactivity enabling tool.
