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Sign Language Video Communications

For many individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, the preferred mode for communication is through sign. This project focuses on providing an effective means for the transmission of guestures and sign over low bandwidth channels (phone line or the Internet). The development of such a technique may provide a means for these individuals to receive classroom information and remote communications in sign.

Our most current version of sign content coding developed employs H.261 and H.263 coding standards. This work allows for one way communication of sign over the X bandwidth. The next generation of development focuses on moving our work into the more flexible and powerful MPEG-4 coding standard. By using these coding standards, compression significant to permit two-way sign language video conferencing may be realized. Communication over existing modems may be achieved at frame rates and with picture quality appropriate for intelligible sign.

Papers and Publications

1."Region of Interest Priority Coding for Sign Language Videoconferencing." R. Schumeyer, E. Heredia, and K. Barner; IEEE First Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, pp. 531-536, Princeton, 1997. [ postscript ] , [ HTML ]
2. "A Color-Based Classifier for Region Identification in Video." R. Schumeyer and K. Barner; Visual Communications and Image Processing 1998, SPIE vol. 3309, pp. 189-200. [ postscript ] , [ HTML ]
3. "Color-Based Content Coding with Applications to Sign Language Video Communications" R. Schumeyer and K. Barner; submitted to EIEEE Trans. Circ. Sys. Video Tech. postscript,

Sample Video Sequences
The following sequences are H.263 encoded. A free H.263 decoder is available from Telenor.

[ Original "Silent" Sequence ]
[ Uniform Compression ]
[ Flesh Pixels ]
[ ROI Blocks ]
[ Hand Segmented ROI Only ]
[ Auto Segmented ROI Only [
Journal of Video Coding Related Links [

Staff

Prof. Ken Barner, Principle Investigator

Students

Rick Schumeyer (graduated)