Digital Media Research groups

The main objective of the Digital Media department in Vicomtech is to provide technological solutions to the different agents in the audiovisual and multimedia value chain, thus improving the television user-experience and the activities performed by the broadcast-world professionals. The main activity lines of the department are:

Interactive Multimedia and Multiscreen Experiences

A clear trend can be observed within the Information Society towards the use of mobile devices and the convergence of different channels, such as broadcast and the Internet, which require technological solutions that seamlessly integrate multimedia flows and allow users interact with content through multiple screens at the same time. Vicomtech offers an extensive know-how and innovative technological solutions that foster this Multimedia Home ecosystem, making content and services available following a user centric approach. Vicomtech actively participates in the following technological fields:

  • Resources’ discovery and association: both services and devices, and their association to users.
  • Simultaneous display of multimedia services controlled by a single user in different devices at the same time:
    • Dynamic and self-adjusting content adaptation into multiple devices
    • Multi-device consistency and content synchronization

Vicomtech is actively working on all these technologies in the framework of national and international R&D projects that cover both proprietary solutions and open standards, such as HbbTV or HTML-5 based service platforms.

Audiovisual Production and Broadcast Technologies

Media Production processes are affected by the quick technological advances in both the electronics consumer market and the professional world. Nowadays the production pipeline is evolving towards better quality. The following aspects can be mainly emphasised:

  • Ultra HD/4K
  • High Dynamic Range (HDR)
  • 3D / Stereoscopy 
    • FVV (Free Viewpoint Video)
    • Virtual/Augmented Reality
  • Image frequency higher than 100 frames per second
  • 360º video

Multimedia Flow Management

Vicomtech also has knowledge and own developments on the automation of content generation processes and media flow management. All of the research and development activities carried out by Vicomtech within this field maintain a high degree of standardisation and ensures interoperability for both broadcast (header, mobile units, studios, etc.) and IP-based infrastructures (adaptive streaming, synchronization in different devices, etc.). Vicomtech has a wide knowledge on multimedia frameworks like Gstreamer, with solutions that integrate codification (MPEG-2, H.264, H.265) and content distribution (DVB-T/S/C, OTT) into a single flexible solution for multimedia flow management.

Vicomtech also has an advanced media laboratory used for both R&D projects and for the repetition of real ecosystems for the validation to solutions. This lab is also used for and verification tasks for prototypes, commercial equipment, interoperability tests, etc.

http://www.vicomtech.org/en/d3/digital-media

Science field

Engineering & Technology

Institution
Vicomtech
Main researcher
Mikel Zorrilla Berasategui