The European COST 211 Group - Research on Redundancy Reduction Techniques and Content Analysis for Multimedia Services

 

COST 211 is a collaborative research forum facilitating the creation and maintenance in Europe of a high level of expertise in the field of video compression and related activities. The COST 211bis action was a project dealing with redundancy reduction techniques applied to video signals. COST211 ter was a follow-on project to this dealing with redundancy reduction techniques and content analysis for multimedia services. COST 211quat is the most recent COST 211 Action which continues the work of COST 211ter.

The COST 211 project operates by defining for itself a specific focus and a specific set of objectives with respect to this focus (c.f. COST 211ter Focus Document). Members are encouraged to contribute research results in order to allow COST 211 to develop technology to achieve these objectives. Collaboration is achieved by document contributions and presentation of results at meetings, by remote working via email, and by simulation software exchange. Focussing on important areas in the multimedia domain and stimulating collaborative research has allowed the group to be a significant factor in the development of key technologies such as block-based video compression (e.g. H.261/H.263), object-oriented analysis synthesis coding (e.g. SIMOC: the COST 211 simulation Model for Object-based Coding), and image/video analysis and segmentation for MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 (e.g. the COST 211 AM).

However COST 211 does not limit itself to contributions specifically related to its focus at a particular time. Rather COST 211 is an open and flexible collaborative frame-work which welcomes contributions from members on any topic of interest within the field of image/video processing. This includes, but is not limited to, compression (block-based or otherwise), image/video segmentation, feature extraction, evaluation methodologies, hardware considerations.