Rahul Vanam, Ph.D.

Dr. Rahul Vanam is presently a Senior Research Scientist at Amazon Prime Video. Previously, he held research positions at Brightcove and InterDigital Communications. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research interest includes video and image compression and processing, video quality metrics, and perceptual video coding.

Professional Activities

• • Associate editor, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 2015 – 2018.

  • Publicity co-chair, Southwest Symposium on Image Analysis and Interpretation (SSIAI), 2016, 2018.

  • Guest co-editor, IEEE MMTC E-Letter Special issue on Ultra high-definition video communications, Jan 2016.

  • Area chair, IEEE International conference on multimedia and expo (ICME) 2015.

  • Key member of the IEEE MMTC Multimedia Processing for Communications Interest Group (MPCIG).

Publications

Note: Complete list can be found on Google Scholar.

Journal Papers

• • "A Unified Video Codec for SDR, HDR, and 360° Video Applications," X. Xiaoyu, P. Hanhart, Y. He, Y. Ye, R. Vanam, T. Lu, F. Pu, and P. Yin, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 2019.

  • "Fast algorithms for designing nearly optimal lookup tables for complexity control of the H.264 encoder," Rahul Vanam, Eve Riskin, Richard Ladner, Sheila Hemami, Signal, Image and Video Processing, pp. 991-1003, Vol. 7, No. 5, 2013. (Link to the final publication)

  • “MobileASL: Real-Time Video Conferencing of American Sign Language over Cell Phones,” Rahul Vanam and Jaehong Chon, IEEE ComSoc MMTC E-Letter, Vol. 6, No. 5, pp. 32-34, May 2011.

  • "An objective metric of human subjective audio quality optimized to operate over a wide range of audio fidelities," Charles D. Creusere, Kumar D. Kallakuri and Rahul Vanam, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, Vol.16, pp.129-136, Jan. 2008.

  • "MobileASL: Intelligibility of sign language video over mobile phones," Anna Cavender, Rahul Vanam, Dane K. Barney, Richard E. Ladner and Eve A. Riskin, Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technologies, London: Taylor and Francis, pp.1-13, 2007.

Conference Papers

• • “Frame rate up-conversion using bi-directional optical flows with dual regularization,” R. Vanam and Y. A. Reznik, Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), UAE, 2020.

  • "Assessing objective video quality in systems with multi-generation transcoding," R. Vanam, K. O. Lillevold, Y. A. Reznik, SPIE Applications of Digital Image Processing XLIII, San Diego, CA, 2020. 

  • “Improved video coding techniques for next generation video coding standard,” X. Xu, Y. He, Y. Ye, R. Vanam, et al., Proc. of IEEE Data Compression Conference (DCC), UT, 2019.

  • "Improved lossless intra coding for next generation video coding," R. Vanam, Y. He, and Y. Ye, Proc. of SPIE Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXIX, San Diego, CA, Aug. 2016.

  • "Adapting objective video quality metrics to ambient lighting,” L.J. Kerofsky, R. Vanam, and Y.A. Reznik, 7th International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX), 2015.

  • "Rate control for lossless region of interest coding in HEVC intra-coding with applications to digital pathology images,” V. Sanchez,F. Aulí-Llinàs, R. Vanam, and J. Bartrina-Rapesta, Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), pp.1250-1254, Brisbane, Australia, April 2015.

  • “Adaptive quantization by soft thresholding in HEVC,” L. Prangnell, V. Sanchez, and R. Vanam, Picture Coding Symposium (PCS), 2015.

  • “Perceptual adaption of objective video quality metrics,” Louis J. Kerofsky, Rahul Vanam, and Yuriy A. Reznik, Ninth international workshop on video processing and quality metrics for consumer electronics (VPQM), 2015.

  • “Subjective quality of video bit-rate reduction by distance adaptation,” Qing Song, Pamela C. Cosman, Morgan He, Rahul Vanam, Louis J. Kerofsky, and Yuriy A. Reznik, Ninth international workshop on video processing and quality metrics for consumer electronics (VPQM), 2015.

  • "Improved adaptive video delivery system using a perceptual pre-processing filter," Louis J. Kerofsky, Rahul Vanam, and Yuriy A. Reznik, Proc. of the 2nd IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information processing (GlobalSIP), pp. 1226-1230, Atlanta, GA, December 2014.

  • "Perceptual pre-processing filter for adaptive Video on Demand content delivery," Rahul Vanam, Louis Kerofsky, and Yuriy Reznik, Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), pp. 2537-2541, Paris, Oct. 2014.

  • “Perceptual pre-processing filter for user-adaptive coding and delivery of visual information,” Rahul Vanam and Yuriy Reznik, Proc. of the 30th Picture Coding Symposium (PCS), pp. 426-429, San Jose, CA, Dec. 2013.

  • "Joint edge-directed interpolation and adaptive sharpening filter," Rahul Vanam, Yan Ye, and Serhad Doken, Proc. of the First IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information processing (GlobalSIP), pp.767-770, Austin, TX, Dec. 2013.

  • "Improving coding and delivery of video by exploiting the oblique effect," Yuriy Reznik and Rahul Vanam, Proc. of the First IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information processing (GlobalSIP), pp. 775-778, Austin, TX, Dec. 2013.

  • "Enabling QoE-based scheduling via PSNR time series prediction for video teleconferencing," Liangping Ma, Yuriy Reznik, Rahul Vanam, and Gregory Sternberg, SPIE Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXVI, San Diego CA, August 2013.

  • "Improving the Efficiency of Video Coding by Using Perceptual Preprocessing Filter," Rahul Vanam and Yuriy Reznik, Proc. of the IEEE Data Compression Conference, pp.524, Snowbird, Utah, March 2013.

  • "Error resilient video coding for systems with delayed feedback," Rahul Vanam, Zhifeng Chen, and Yuriy Reznik, Proc. IEEE Visual Communications and Image Processing, San Diego, CA, November 2012.

  • "User-adaptive mobile video streaming," Yuriy Reznik, Ed Asbun, Zhifeng Chen, Yan Ye, Eldad Zeira, Rahul Vanam, et al., Proc. IEEE Visual Communications and Image Processing, San Diego, CA, November, 2012.

  • "Adaptive bilateral filter for video and image upsampling," Rahul Vanam and Yan Ye, SPIE Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXV, San Diego, CA, August 2012. 

  • "Error-resilient video coding for wireless video telephony applications ," Rahul Vanam and Yuriy Reznik, SPIE Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXV, San Diego, CA, August 2012. 

  • "MobileASL: Overcoming the technical challenges of mobile video conversation in Sign Language," Anna Cavender, Neva Cherniavsky, Jaehong Chon, Richard Ladner, Eve Riskin, Rahul Vanam, and Jacob Wobbrock, In LREC 2010 4th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages, Malta, May 2010.

  • "Rate-distortion-complexity optimization of an H.264/AVC encoder for real-time videoconferencing on a mobile device," Frank Ciaramello, Rahul Vanam, Jaehong Chon, Sheila S. Hemami, Eve A. Riskin and Richard E. Ladner, 5th International Workshop on Video Processing and Quality Metrics for Consumer Electronics (VPQM 2010), Scottsdale, AZ, January 2010.

  • "Joint Rate-Intelligibility-Complexity Optimization of an H.264 Video Encoder for American Sign Language," Rahul Vanam, Frank Ciaramello, Eve A. Riskin, Sheila S. Hemami and Richard E. Ladner, Western New York Image Processing Workshop (WNYIP), Rochester, NY, September 2009. Awarded Best Student Paper.

  • "H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoder parameter selection algorithms for complexity distortion tradeoff," Rahul Vanam, Eve A. Riskin, and Richard E. Ladner, Proc. of the IEEE Data Compression Conference, pp.372-381, Snowbird, Utah, March 2009.

  • "Improved rate control and motion estimation for H.264 encoder," Loren Merritt and Rahul Vanam, Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Vol.5, pp.309-312, San Antonio, TX, 2007.

  • "Distortion-complexity optimization of the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoder using the GBFOS algorithm," Rahul Vanam, Eve A. Riskin, Sheila S. Hemami and Richard E. Ladner, Proc. of the IEEE Data Compression Conference, pp.303-312, Snowbird, Utah, March 2007. [Talk Slides]

  • "Scalable perceptual metric for evaluating audio quality," Rahul Vanam and Charles D. Creusere, Proc. of the 39th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, pp.319-323, Pacific Grove, CA, 2005. [Talk Slides]

  • "Evaluating low bitrate scalable audio quality using advanced version of PEAQ and energy equalization approach," Rahul Vanam and Charles D. Creusere, Proc. of the IEEE ICASSP, Vol.3, pp.189-192, Philadelphia, March 2005.

Theses

• • Rate-Distortion-Complexity Optimization of Video Encoders with Applications to Sign Language Video Compression, Ph.D. thesis, Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 2010.

  • Scalable perceptual metric for evaluating audio impairment. M.S. thesis, Electrical and Computer Engineering, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA, 2005.