Ultra-Lightweight Face Animation Method for Ultra-Low Bitrate Video Conferencing

Abstract: Video conferencing systems face the dilemma between smooth streaming and decent visual quality because traditional video com⁃ pression algorithms fail to produce bitstreams low enough for bandwidth-constrained networks. An ultra-lightweight face-animation-based method that enables better video conferencing experience is proposed in this paper. The proposed method compresses high-quality upperbody videos with ultra-low bitrates and runs efficiently on mobile devices without high-end graphics processing units (GPU). Moreover, a vi⁃ sual quality evaluation algorithm is used to avoid image degradation caused by extreme face poses and/or expressions, and a full resolution im⁃ age composition algorithm to reduce unnaturalness, which guarantees the user experience. Experiments show that the proposed method is effi⁃ cient and can generate high-quality videos at ultra-low bitrates.

Keywords: talking heads; face animation; video conferencing; generative adversarial network