Registration for Fall Term
Application open (MDT Time Zone): October 1
Application deadline (International Student): March 1
*Applicants will start receiving notifications in March

Note: Domestic applicant who does not require study visa can also apply between March 1 and July 31 (email csmmadm@ualberta.ca before July 31)

Webinar produced by Multimedia Students and organized by International Student Services – A Video Overview of the Multimedia Master Program.

Course, Ethics & PD Training Requirements

Master of Multimedia, MM, courses can be find in the University of Alberta course catalogue. Three MM mandatory courses are offered to students in each of the first two terms. The six courses aim to provide students a broad scope of knowledge/skills suitable for a wide range of industrial applications.

The Multimedia Master Program requires students to spend the third and fourth terms on internship in industry or research groups, which include venues abroad in EU or US. One main feature of this program is the potential of involving in industrial projects during the internship phase, which will assist in planning the career directions of enrolled students. Projects may involve multimedia techniques in games & movies, TV & transmission, medical & rehabilitation, or education & training. Partner organizations are consulted regularly to define practical R&D course project topics to meet industrial needs.

In addition to the Multimedia courses and internship, students need to fulfil the Professional Development and Ethics Training requirements in order to graduate.

Courses

MM 801 HCI and Applications

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable). Multimedia data, e.g. image, video, static and dynamic 3D models, sound and signal, are often delivered to the users via display, haptic or other sensor-based devices. Understanding how human and computer interact can enhance application performance. The understanding of perceptual responses can be achieved by monitoring facial expression, tracking body gesture, hearing their voices and so on. Human perceptual response can be affected by prior knowledge, environment, content communicated from the computer, etc. This course discusses computer vision and image processing based techniques to support human-centric individual and collaborative interactive applications, including multi-touch for real-time interaction. Human perceptual factors and user study methodologies will also be covered.

MM 802 Multimedia Communications

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable). As a result of the advances in network infrastructures and increasing user participation in social media using displays ranging from IMAX theatres to home entertainment systems, and from desktops to handheld devices, problems associated with multimedia content encoding, synchronization, scheduling and delivery, on top of potential packet loss, have increased significantly. These issues are particularly challenging in real-time applications. This course focuses on time and space optimization techniques with the goal to achieve Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE), taking perceptual quality into consideration, to support the communication and visualization of multimedia content transmitted over reliable as well as unreliable networks.

MM 803 Image and Video Processing

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable) Image and Video quality is essential in many applications, which deliver educational content, medical images, games, movies, video-on-demand and so on. In order to generate high quality image and video, especially given the sheer volume of consumer demand and under constrained resources, e.g. time and bandwidth, it is necessary to understand the image and video processing pipeline from the initial creation limitations to the final display at the receiver. In addition to the fundamental concepts in image processing, this course will cover a number encoding standards including the HEVC standard, which has emerged and outperforms previous standards in many aspects. This course focuses on reviewing various image/video processing and transmission techniques, as well as the quality assessment metrics proposed in the literature.

MM 804 Graphics and Animation

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable). Developing appealing graphics and animations has become a requirement in many industrial applications like entertainment, advertising and online education. Animation is effective in explaining abstract concepts in biology, physics and medicine. 3D graphics and simulation is also beneficial in surgical training and planning. This course is intended to provide in-depth discussions on graphics and animation techniques, in particular relating to 3D data acquisition, processing, transmission and rendering. Students will have the opportunity to understand and compare various state-of-the-art techniques in 3D modeling, animation and special effects.

MM 805 Computer Vision and 3DTV

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable). While traditional image and video remain at the core of multimedia content, 3D video is perceived as the next generation in video technology. 3D video incorporates the depth perspective which enables viewers to feel immersed in a more realistic environment. This course provides students with the latest 3D video developments and in particular relating to stereoscopic and multi-view with or without special eye-wear. Many of the techniques proposed on 3D video inherit much of the strengths from 2D video methods and computer vision techniques. The 3D component is also included in the latest HEVC standard. This course will focus on literature review and survey of these techniques. Group studies, discussions and presentations constitute the main thrust of the course.

MM 806 Virtual Reality and Tele-Presence

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable). Virtual reality and augmented reality can provide an immersive environment where many scenarios can be simulated. For example, manufacturing and engineering tasks, medical planning and training, art and design, rehabilitation, Physics, Biology and Chemistry concept exploration and many others can benefit from a virtual reality environment . This course focuses on the challenges of setting up a user friendly virtual reality scene where users can interact in an intuitive and natural way. The use of interactive techniques and sensor-based devices, such as haptic and head-mount display, in creating a virtual environment for scientific analysis, visualization exploration and Tele-presence, as well as how mobile users can participate in these applications, will be discussed.

MM 807 Multimedia Internship Project I

*9 (fi 18) (either term, variable).

MM 808 Multimedia Internship Project II

*9 (fi 18) (either term, variable).

MM 809 Multimedia Supplementary Internship Project

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable).

MM 810 Multimedia Supplementary Internship Project

*6 (fi 12) (either term, variable).

MM 811 AI in Multimedia

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable). A multimedia topic reflecting the current R&D trend in industry.

MM 812 Multimedia Topic

*3 (fi 6) (either term, variable). A multimedia topic reflecting the current R&D trend in industry.

FGSR required Profession Development and 8 hours Ethics Training

Students need to complete