MPEG-4 Facial Animation: The Standard, Implementation and Applications by Pandzic

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 reading for the Industry and research community especially engineers, researchers and developers.

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"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."