Course detail

Multimedia Services

FEKT-BPC-MDSAcad. year: 2026/2027

The course Multimedia Services is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on network technologies and the transmission of multimedia data over the Internet. Students are introduced to the fundamentals of routing in IP networks, to group addressing (multicast), to the transport protocols TCP, UDP and QUIC, and to protocols for real-time transmission (RTP/RTCP, SDP), including techniques for NAT traversal. Particular attention is paid to ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE). The second part of the course covers in detail the current technologies of adaptive streaming and content delivery, namely the protocols used to deliver video to the streaming server (RTMP, SRT), the MPEG-DASH and HLS formats, content delivery networks (CDN), multimedia containers and content protection (DRM), as well as Internet telephony with SIP signalling, videoconferencing and WebRTC technology. The final part of the course is oriented towards compression algorithms for image and audio data. Specifically, it covers the JPEG, H.26x and MPEG-x standards, the modern AV1 and Opus codecs, and the G.7xx speech codecs. The course concludes with the use of artificial intelligence in multimedia and the expected future trends.

Language of instruction

Czech

Number of ECTS credits

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Guarantor

doc. Ing. Petr Číka, Ph.D.

Department

Department of Telecommunications (UTKO)

Entry knowledge

Basic knowledge of IP networks is required.

Rules for evaluation and completion of the course

Up to 30 points can be awarded for work in laboratory exercises (points are obtained for individual tasks and individual project).
Up to 70 points can be earned for the written examination.

The definition of supervised teaching and the manner in which it is carried out is set out in the annually updated decree of the subject guarantor.

Aims

The aim of the course is to provide students with both practical experience and the basic theoretical knowledge of multimedia communication services in contemporary transmission networks.
Students acquire the theoretical foundations of multimedia services operated in IP networks. On this basis they are able to analyse and design multimedia systems of both small and large scale. Students are able to explain the principles of real-time distribution of multimedia data and the principles of services such as Internet telephony, videoconferencing, Internet television and adaptive streaming. They also gain an overview of the transport and signalling protocols on which these services are built, as well as of the codecs used for the compression of image and audio signals. Students are further able to assess the quality of a multimedia service both from the perspective of the network (QoS) and from the perspective of the end user (QoE), and to propose measures for ensuring it. In the laboratory exercises, students build a complete video delivery chain in practice – from the choice of codec and container through the streaming server to the web player – and verify the operation of adaptive streaming under real conditions.

Study aids

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Not applicable.

Basic literature

Benny Bing. Video Coding and Online Streaming Technologies: Principles and Practice of AVC, HEVC, AV1, VVC, HLS, MSS, and MPEG-DASH. ISBN 978-0976675235 (CS)
ČÍKA, P. Multimediální služby. Skriptum VUT v Brně. 2012, ISBN: 978-80-214-4443- 0. (CS)
ČÍKA, Petr. Přenos a komprese audio-video dat pro integrovanou výuku VUT a VŠB-TUO. 1. Brno: Vysoké učení technické v Brně, 2014. ISBN: 978-80-214-5061- 5. (CS)

Type of course unit

Lecture

26 hours, optionally

Teacher / Lecturer

doc. Ing. Petr Číka, Ph.D.

Syllabus

1. Introductory lecture, inclusion of multimedia services
2. TCP/IP network model - methods of multimedia data transmission in packet networks, definition of group broadcasting - multicast, streaming
3. TCP/IP network model - quality of service (QoS) for multimedia systems, quality of experience (QoE)
4. TCP/IP network model - transport layer and its use in multimedia data transmission, application layer - RTP, RTCP protocols
5. IP television and video streaming - RTSP, SDP, SAP, RTMP, MPEG-DASH, HLS, SRT, MPEG-2 TS protocols
6. Real-time two-way audiovisual communication, description of communication models, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) - architecture, basic communication.
7. SIP protocol - advanced methods
8. Real-time two-way audiovisual communication - general description of videoconferencing technology, description of the H.323 standard and its comparison with the SIP standard
9. Compression of static bitmap images, properties of bitmap images - properties of the human visual system, JPEG (Joint Picture Expert Group) compression standard
10. Video compression - MPEG (Motion Picture Expert Group) and H.26x family of standards
11. Compression of speech signals used in voice communication via VoIP and video conferencing - G.7xx codecs
12. Summary

Laboratory exercise

26 hours, compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer

Ing. Petr Ilgner, Ph.D.

Syllabus

1. Introductory exercise + Video on Demand (VoD, Unicast/Broadcast/Multicast)
2. Working with FFmpeg, adaptive streaming
3. RTMP protocol, creating a stream, configuring OBS
4. Configuring the RTMP server with respect to security
5. Configuring RTMP to HLS translation
6. Configuration of Asterisk PBX software
7. Test
8. Programming the player for adaptive streaming
9. Programming the player for adaptive streaming
10. Independent work on a project
11. Independent work on a project
12. Project review
12. Project review

Elearning

eLearning: currently opened course

VUT

Faculties and university institutes

Parts

Multimedia Services

Type of course unit