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CHEN Changwen is currently Dean of School of Science and Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong， Shenzhen， China. He also serves as Deputy Director of Peng Cheng Laboratory. He continues to serve as an Empire Innovation Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo， State University of New York， USA. He was Allen Henry Endow Chair Professor at the Florida Institute of Technology， USA from July 2003 to December 2007. He was on the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Rochester， USA from 1992 to 1996 and on the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Missouri?Columbia， USA from 1996 to 2003.
He was the Editor?in?Chief for IEEE Trans. Multimedia from January 2014 to December 2016. He also served as the Editor?in?Chief for IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems for Video Technology from January 2006 to December 2009. He has been an Editor for several other major IEEE Transactions and Journals， including the Proceedings of IEEE， IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications， and IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems. He has served as Conference Chair for several major IEEE， ACM and SPIE conferences related to multimedia video communications and signal processing. His research has been supported by NSF， DARPA， Air Force， NASA， Whitaker Foundation， Microsoft， Intel， Kodak， Huawei， and Technicolor.
He received his B.S. from University of Science and Technology of China in 1983， M.S.E.E. from University of Southern California， USA in 1986， and Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana?Champaign， USA in 1992. He and his students have received nine Best Paper Awards or Best Student Paper Awards over the past two decades. He has also received several research and professional achievement awards， including the Sigma Xi Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring Award in 2003， Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in 2009， the University at Buffalo Exceptional Scholar—Sustained Achievement Award in 2012， and the State University of New York System Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2016. He has been an IEEE Fellow since 2004 and an SPIE Fellow since 2007.
ZHAO Tiesong is currently a Minjiang Distinguished Professor with Fuzhou University， China. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2006， and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the City University of Hong Kong， China in 2011. From 2012 to 2015， he served as postdoc researchers in City University of Hong Kong， University of Waterloo， Canada and the University at Buffalo， State University of New York， USA， respectively. He has joined Fuzhou University since 2015. In 2017， he received the Fujian Science & Technology Award for Young Scientists. Since 2019， he has also been served as the AE of IET Electronics Letters. His research interests include multimedia signal processing， coding and transmission. CHEN Zhibo received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Department of Electrical Engineering， Tsinghua University， China in 1998 and 2003， respectively. He is now a professor in University of Science and Technology of China. Before that he worked with SONY and Thomson from 2003 to 2012. He was a principal scientist and research manager at Thomson Research & Innovation Department. His research interests include image and video compression， visual quality of experience assessment， immersive media computing， and intelligent media computing. He has more than 50 granted and over 100 filed EU and US patent applications， more than 80 publications. He is an IEEE senior member， member of IEEE Visual Signal Processing and Communications Committee， and member of IEEE Multimedia Communication Committee. He was an organization committee member of ICIP 2017 and ICME 2013， and served as a TPC member in IEEE ISCAS and IEEE VCIP.
As 5G mobile communication is making its powerful progress towards full deployment in the near future， we have witnessed tremendous growth of smart mobile devices capable of various video streaming and sharing services. Mobile video services account for majority of the current Internet and wireless data services. Unlike other type of data services， the quality of video service is primarily governed by the end users who are watching videos on the receiving display terminals. The perception and experience of the end users should be the true criteria to assess the quality of the video services. For emerging video communication services， it is the quality of experience， or QoE in short， of the users that should be the most important measure for systematic design for next generation mobile communications.
To examine the state?of?the?art QoE for video communication and networking， we invited a distinguished group of researchers worldwide to present their most recent researches in this special issue. A wide range of topics related to QoE for video communications， from fundamental techniques in video quality assessment， to quality assessment and measurement strategies， to automating quality of service （QoS） and QoE evaluations， to QoE issues related to visual attention modeling， omnidirectional video， and haptic communications， have all been explored in this special issue. We hope such diverse topics related to QoE for video communications can bring the readers some fresh perspectives about how important the issue of QoE is and how the video communication users are best served with enhanced QoE through innovative design. This special issue begins with the paper entitled “Recent Advances and Challenges in Video Quality Assessment.” This paper gives an up?to?date review of video quality assessment （VQA） research and highlights the challenges to conduct VQA research. Both subjective study and common VQA databases， as well as various objective VQA methods are reviewed. The authors pointed out several challenges in VQA， including the impact of video content， the memory effects， the computational efficiency， and the personalized video quality prediction.
The second paper is entitled “Quality Assessment and Measurement for Internet Video Streaming.” The authors point out that conventional video quality assessment methods have been designed for broadcasting mode of operations. Emerging Internet?based video services are fundamentally different from broadcasting mode and different assessment strategies must be adopted. Both subjective and objective metrics should be implemented and the measurement may be carried out at client side， server side and in?network to ensure an overall picture of the video service quality.
The third paper entitled “Automating QoS and QoE Evaluation of HTTP Adaptive Streaming Systems” presents a novel strategy of automating QoS and QoE evaluations for the emerging HTTP video streaming systems. For the HTTP streaming systems， the adaptation of video bitrate and possibly even the video resolution makes the assessment of the overall quality much more challenging. This paper presents a flexible and comprehensive framework to conduct objective and subjective evaluations of HAS systems in a fully automated and scalable way. Main features of the proposed approach include end?to?end evaluation of video streaming players deployed in industry， collection and analysis of objective streaming performance metrics， and subjective quality assessment utilizing crowdsourcing for QoE evaluation.
The next paper entitled “Quality of Experience Effects in Video Delivery” discusses the quality?of?experience effects in video delivery eco?system from the source， via complex networks， to the destination. One interesting aspect of this paper is its report on the investigation of the significant differences between the conventional QoS and QoE. Based on the investigation， end?to?end QoE effects have been studied and main conclusions are summarized. In particular， this paper presents the analysis of different types of impacting factors on the overall QoE of the current video communication systems. The next three papers address service quality issues from different perspectives and for different applications. The first paper in this group is entitled “Visual Attention Modeling in Compressed Domain： From Image Saliency Detection to Video Saliency Detection.” This paper explores the visual attention modeling in the compressed domain for both image and video saliency detection. Saliency regions in compressed image or video play a significant role in the perception of compressed image and video and therefore are closely related to the quality of experience when viewing the received image and video. In particular， this paper introduces fusion strategies to combine spatial and temporal saliency maps to obtain the consistent result for video saliency map.
The second paper in this group entitled “Perceptual Quality Assessment of Omnidirectional Images： Subjective Experiment and Objective Model Evaluation” addresses the quality assessment of one emerging type of media， omnidirectional images and videos. This new class of media provides immersive experience of real?world scenes in virtual reality environments and special evaluation strategies are very much needed. The authors have established the first database of omnidirectional images for the study how such a new type of media data is different from conventional image quality assessment. Some insightful observations have been obtained through this interesting study.
Finally， we present a paper entitled “Quality?of?Experience in Human?in?the?Loop Haptic Communications” that addresses futuristic media application in haptic communication， one of the key use scenarios for 5G. One unique feature of this type of media application is its human?in?the?loop nature which makes the QoE more important than other 5G use scenarios. The QoE for haptic communications can be observed at user level， or at application level， and even at network level. This paper not only provides comprehensive review of the state?of?the?art QoE management strategies in haptic communications， but also shows technical challenges and research opportunities for seamless haptic communications in the future.
The Guest Editors would like to thank the Editorial Office of ZTE Communications for their continuous support throughout the submission and review process. The Guest Editors would also like to thank all the authors for accepting our invitation to contribute to this special issue and to the reviewers for their timely and professional review of these papers.
He was the Editor?in?Chief for IEEE Trans. Multimedia from January 2014 to December 2016. He also served as the Editor?in?Chief for IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems for Video Technology from January 2006 to December 2009. He has been an Editor for several other major IEEE Transactions and Journals， including the Proceedings of IEEE， IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications， and IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems. He has served as Conference Chair for several major IEEE， ACM and SPIE conferences related to multimedia video communications and signal processing. His research has been supported by NSF， DARPA， Air Force， NASA， Whitaker Foundation， Microsoft， Intel， Kodak， Huawei， and Technicolor.
He received his B.S. from University of Science and Technology of China in 1983， M.S.E.E. from University of Southern California， USA in 1986， and Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana?Champaign， USA in 1992. He and his students have received nine Best Paper Awards or Best Student Paper Awards over the past two decades. He has also received several research and professional achievement awards， including the Sigma Xi Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring Award in 2003， Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in 2009， the University at Buffalo Exceptional Scholar—Sustained Achievement Award in 2012， and the State University of New York System Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2016. He has been an IEEE Fellow since 2004 and an SPIE Fellow since 2007.
ZHAO Tiesong is currently a Minjiang Distinguished Professor with Fuzhou University， China. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2006， and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the City University of Hong Kong， China in 2011. From 2012 to 2015， he served as postdoc researchers in City University of Hong Kong， University of Waterloo， Canada and the University at Buffalo， State University of New York， USA， respectively. He has joined Fuzhou University since 2015. In 2017， he received the Fujian Science & Technology Award for Young Scientists. Since 2019， he has also been served as the AE of IET Electronics Letters. His research interests include multimedia signal processing， coding and transmission. CHEN Zhibo received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Department of Electrical Engineering， Tsinghua University， China in 1998 and 2003， respectively. He is now a professor in University of Science and Technology of China. Before that he worked with SONY and Thomson from 2003 to 2012. He was a principal scientist and research manager at Thomson Research & Innovation Department. His research interests include image and video compression， visual quality of experience assessment， immersive media computing， and intelligent media computing. He has more than 50 granted and over 100 filed EU and US patent applications， more than 80 publications. He is an IEEE senior member， member of IEEE Visual Signal Processing and Communications Committee， and member of IEEE Multimedia Communication Committee. He was an organization committee member of ICIP 2017 and ICME 2013， and served as a TPC member in IEEE ISCAS and IEEE VCIP.
As 5G mobile communication is making its powerful progress towards full deployment in the near future， we have witnessed tremendous growth of smart mobile devices capable of various video streaming and sharing services. Mobile video services account for majority of the current Internet and wireless data services. Unlike other type of data services， the quality of video service is primarily governed by the end users who are watching videos on the receiving display terminals. The perception and experience of the end users should be the true criteria to assess the quality of the video services. For emerging video communication services， it is the quality of experience， or QoE in short， of the users that should be the most important measure for systematic design for next generation mobile communications.
To examine the state?of?the?art QoE for video communication and networking， we invited a distinguished group of researchers worldwide to present their most recent researches in this special issue. A wide range of topics related to QoE for video communications， from fundamental techniques in video quality assessment， to quality assessment and measurement strategies， to automating quality of service （QoS） and QoE evaluations， to QoE issues related to visual attention modeling， omnidirectional video， and haptic communications， have all been explored in this special issue. We hope such diverse topics related to QoE for video communications can bring the readers some fresh perspectives about how important the issue of QoE is and how the video communication users are best served with enhanced QoE through innovative design. This special issue begins with the paper entitled “Recent Advances and Challenges in Video Quality Assessment.” This paper gives an up?to?date review of video quality assessment （VQA） research and highlights the challenges to conduct VQA research. Both subjective study and common VQA databases， as well as various objective VQA methods are reviewed. The authors pointed out several challenges in VQA， including the impact of video content， the memory effects， the computational efficiency， and the personalized video quality prediction.
The second paper is entitled “Quality Assessment and Measurement for Internet Video Streaming.” The authors point out that conventional video quality assessment methods have been designed for broadcasting mode of operations. Emerging Internet?based video services are fundamentally different from broadcasting mode and different assessment strategies must be adopted. Both subjective and objective metrics should be implemented and the measurement may be carried out at client side， server side and in?network to ensure an overall picture of the video service quality.
The third paper entitled “Automating QoS and QoE Evaluation of HTTP Adaptive Streaming Systems” presents a novel strategy of automating QoS and QoE evaluations for the emerging HTTP video streaming systems. For the HTTP streaming systems， the adaptation of video bitrate and possibly even the video resolution makes the assessment of the overall quality much more challenging. This paper presents a flexible and comprehensive framework to conduct objective and subjective evaluations of HAS systems in a fully automated and scalable way. Main features of the proposed approach include end?to?end evaluation of video streaming players deployed in industry， collection and analysis of objective streaming performance metrics， and subjective quality assessment utilizing crowdsourcing for QoE evaluation.
The next paper entitled “Quality of Experience Effects in Video Delivery” discusses the quality?of?experience effects in video delivery eco?system from the source， via complex networks， to the destination. One interesting aspect of this paper is its report on the investigation of the significant differences between the conventional QoS and QoE. Based on the investigation， end?to?end QoE effects have been studied and main conclusions are summarized. In particular， this paper presents the analysis of different types of impacting factors on the overall QoE of the current video communication systems. The next three papers address service quality issues from different perspectives and for different applications. The first paper in this group is entitled “Visual Attention Modeling in Compressed Domain： From Image Saliency Detection to Video Saliency Detection.” This paper explores the visual attention modeling in the compressed domain for both image and video saliency detection. Saliency regions in compressed image or video play a significant role in the perception of compressed image and video and therefore are closely related to the quality of experience when viewing the received image and video. In particular， this paper introduces fusion strategies to combine spatial and temporal saliency maps to obtain the consistent result for video saliency map.
The second paper in this group entitled “Perceptual Quality Assessment of Omnidirectional Images： Subjective Experiment and Objective Model Evaluation” addresses the quality assessment of one emerging type of media， omnidirectional images and videos. This new class of media provides immersive experience of real?world scenes in virtual reality environments and special evaluation strategies are very much needed. The authors have established the first database of omnidirectional images for the study how such a new type of media data is different from conventional image quality assessment. Some insightful observations have been obtained through this interesting study.
Finally， we present a paper entitled “Quality?of?Experience in Human?in?the?Loop Haptic Communications” that addresses futuristic media application in haptic communication， one of the key use scenarios for 5G. One unique feature of this type of media application is its human?in?the?loop nature which makes the QoE more important than other 5G use scenarios. The QoE for haptic communications can be observed at user level， or at application level， and even at network level. This paper not only provides comprehensive review of the state?of?the?art QoE management strategies in haptic communications， but also shows technical challenges and research opportunities for seamless haptic communications in the future.
The Guest Editors would like to thank the Editorial Office of ZTE Communications for their continuous support throughout the submission and review process. The Guest Editors would also like to thank all the authors for accepting our invitation to contribute to this special issue and to the reviewers for their timely and professional review of these papers.