Synopses & Reviews
This book concentrates on the animation of faces. The Editors put the MPEG-4 FA standard against the historical background of research on facial animation and model-based coding, and provide a brief history of the development of the standard itself. In part 2 there is a comprehensive overview of the FA specification with the goal of helping the reader understand how the standard really works. Part 3, forms the bulk of the book and covers the implementations of the standard on both encoding and decoding side. Several face animation techniques for MPEG-4 FA decoders are presented. While the standard itself actually specifies only the decoder, for applications it is interesting to look at the wide range of technologies for producing and encoding the FA contents. These include video analysis, speech analysis and synthesis, as well as keyframe animation. The last part of the book provides several examples of applications using the MPEG-4 FA standard.
It will be useful for companies implementing products and services related to the new standard, researchers in several domains related to facial animation, as well as wider technical audience interested in new technologies and applications. The main people involved in the standardization process are contributors to the book Provides several examples of applications using the MPEG-4 Facial Animation standard, including video and speech analysis This will become THE reference for the MPEG-4 Facial Animation Aids the understanding of the reasoning behind the standard specification, how it works and what the potential applications are Gives an overview of the technologies directly related to the standard and its implementation Essential readingfor the Industry and research community especially engineers, researchers and developers.
Synopsis
Die Moving Pictures Expert Group ver ffentlichte vor einiger Zeit den internationalen Standard MPEG-4. Zu seinen grundlegend neuen Teilen geh rt die Face and Body Animation (FBA), die Spezifikation f r die effiziente Codierung menschlicher Gesichter und K rper. Dieser Band konzentriert sich auf die Animation von Gesichtern. Die Herausgeber erl utern im ersten Teil den MPEG-4 FA-Standard vor dem historischen Hintergrund der Forschung ber die Animation von Gesichtern und ber Model-based Coding, enthalten ist auch ein kurzer Abri der Geschichte des Standards selbst. Teil 2 ist ein umfassender berblick ber die FA-Spezifikation. Teil 3, der ausf hrlichste Teil des Buches, behandelt die Implementationen des Standards sowohl auf der Codierungs- als auch auf der Decodierungsseite. Verschiedene Techniken zur Gesichtsanimation f r MPEG-4 FA-Decoder werden dargestellt. Erl utert werden Technologien f r die Produktion und die Codierung der FA-Inhalte, unter anderem Videoanalyse, Sprachanalyse und -synthese sowie Keyframe Animation. Der vierte Teil des Buches enth lt Anwendungsbeispiele. - Die Autoren des Bandes waren selbst am Standardisierungsproze beteiligt.
Synopsis
One of the more revolutionary parts of the MPEG-4 International Standard is the Face and Body Animation, or FBA: the specification for efficient coding of shape and animation of human faces and bodies. This specification is a result of collaboration of experts with different backgrounds ranging from image coding and compression to video analysis, computer graphics, as well as speech analysis and synthesis, all sharing a common interest in computer simulation of humans. This book concentrates on the animation of faces.
Features include:
- Sets the MPEG-4 FA specification against the historical background of research on facial animation and model-based coding and provides a brief history of the development of the standard itself.
- Comprehensive overview of the FA specification with the goal of helping the reader understand how the standard works, what the thinking is behind it, and how it is intended be used.
- Covers the implementation of the standard on both the encoding and decoding side. Presents several face animation techniques for MPEG-4 FA decoders, as well as architectures for building applications based on the standard.
- Brings together a collection of applications using the MPEG-4 FA specification.
- Includes a standard benchmark method for assessing the quality of MPEG-4 FA decoders.
The MPEG-4 FA specification is suitable for a wide range of applications not only in telecommunications and multimedia, but also in fields like computer animation and human-computer interfaces. This book will be a valuable companion for practitioners implementing applications based on the MPEG-4 FA specification and those who wish to understand the standard and its implications.
Synopsis
- Provides several examples of applications using the MPEG-4 Facial Animation standard, including video and speech analysis.
- Covers the implementation of the standard on both the encoding and decoding side.
- Contributors includes individuals instrumental in the standardization process.
Table of Contents
List of Contributors.
Author Biographies.
Foreword.
Preface.
PART 1: BACKGROUND.
The Origins of the MPEG-4 Facial Animation Standard (Igor S. Pandzic and Robert Forchheimer).
PART 2: THE STANDARD.
Face Animation in MPEG-4 (Jörn Ostermann).
MPEG-4 Face Animation Conformance (Eric Petajan).
PART 3: IMPLEMENTATIONS.
MPEG-4 Facial Animation Framework for the Web and Mobile Applications (Igor S. Pandzic).
The Facial Animation Engine (Fabio Lavagetto and Roberto Pockaj).
Extracting MPEG-4 FAPS from Video (Jörgen Ahlberg).
Real-Time Speech-Driven Face Animation (Pengyu Hong, Zhen Wen and Thomas S. Huang).
Visual Text-to-Speech (Catherine Pelachaud).
Emotion Recognition and Synthesis Based on MPEG-4 FAPs (Nicolas Tsapatsoulis, Amaryllis Raouzaiou, Stefanos Kollias, Roddy Cowie and Ellen Douglas-Cowie).
The InterFace Software Platform for Interactive Virtual Characters (Igor S. Pandzic, Michele Cannella, Franck Davoine, Robert Forchheimer, Fabio Lavagetto, Haibo Li, Andrew Marriott, Sotiris Malassiotis, Montse Pardas, Roberto Pockaj and Gael Sannier).
PART 4: APPLICATIONS.
Model-based Coding: The Complete System (Haibo Li and Robert Forchheimer).
A Facial Animation Case Study for HCI: The VHML-Based Mentor System (Andrew Marriott).
PlayMail ? Put Words into Other People?s Mouth (Jörn Ostermann).
E-Cogent: An Electronic Convincing aGENT (Jörn Ostermann).
alterEGO: Video Analysis for Facial Animation (Eric Petajan).
EPTA