arXiv Computer Vision

Toward Sub-1 kB Identity-Preserving Face Compression: A Benchmark of Codecs, a Custom Learned Codec, and Studies of Resolution, Demographic Fairness, Recompression, and Adversarial Robustness

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 1

Data Diversity, Not Frequency Invariance: A Controlled and Self-Audited Study of Compression-Robust Deepfake Detection

The study challenges the prevailing belief that frequency-based features and compression-invariant learning are essential for robust deepfake detection. Using a controlled, pre‑registered protocol, a simple EfficientNet‑B0 trained on diverse multi‑quality data outperformed the more complex CAFRL model across all compression levels, with a 3.66 AUC point advantage at CRF 40. After identifying and correcting four experimental defects, the authors found that frequency features added no marginal benefit, while data diversity—particularly real constant‑rate‑factor variants—proved to be the key factor for robustness against H.264 re‑encoding.

By Abbas Aliyev, Samir Rustamov
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 4

Select, Compress, Reinvest: A Controlled Study of Visual-Token Allocation in Long-Video MLLMs

The study investigates how long‑video language models decide which frames to keep, compress, and reuse, testing each decision in isolation across six selection rules, three benchmarks, and two answering models. It finds that selecting frames based on queries yields the biggest performance boost, that halving spatial resolution costs little, and that reallocating saved tokens to more compressed frames can further improve accuracy. The work also highlights the importance of a unified evaluation harness to avoid misleading comparisons.

By Prakhar Khatri
arXiv AI
Jun 4

CounterFace: A Synthetic Face Dataset for Fine-Grained Counterfactual Evaluation of Face Recognition Systems

arXiv:2407. 13922v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Face recognition (FR) systems are widely deployed in critical applications, making their reliability and robustness across diverse populations and conditions essential.

By Guruprasad Viswanathan Ramesh, Ashish Hooda, Shimaa Ahmed, Harrison J Rosenberg, Ramya Korlakai Vinayak, Kassem Fawaz
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 7

Multi-scale Image Representation Compression

The paper introduces MIRC, an overfitted image codec that quantizes and entropy‑codes all components—including latents, synthesis network, and entropy models—within a single end‑to‑end rate‑distortion framework inspired by NVRC. It adds a multi‑scale representation with cross‑stage parameter sharing to capture cross‑scale redundancy, yielding a 10.5 % BD‑rate saving over VVC on the CLIC2020 professional set. MIRC offers multiple configurations ranging from 1.2 to 2.9 kMAC per pixel, allowing decoding complexity to be tuned to deployment needs.

By Tianhao Peng, Ho Man Kwan, Fan Zhang, Shan Liu, David Bull
arXiv AI
2d ago

Perceptual Refinement of an End-to-End Video Streaming Pipeline via Generative AI Layers

The paper introduces PRESLEY, an end‑to‑end video streaming pipeline that uses generative AI layers to selectively degrade and restore less important regions of a frame. By replacing destructive block removal with adaptive in‑place degradation and signaling block strength via a side channel, PRESLEY achieves significant bitrate savings and improved background quality compared to its predecessor and pristine baselines. The authors also analyze the theoretical headroom of this architecture, quantifying remaining cost‑axis headroom and modeling post‑restoration damage to guide future rate‑distortion‑restoration selection.

By Emanuele Artioli, Farzad Tashtarian, Christian Timmerer