Low-Complexity Error-Control Methods for Scalable Video Streaming

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[Abstract] In this paper, low-complexity error-resilience and error-concealment methods for the scalable video coding (SVC) extension of
H.264/AVC are described. At the encoder, multiple-description coding (MDC) is used as error-resilient coding. Balanced scalable multiple descriptions are generated by mixing the pre-encoded scalable bit streams. Each description is wholly decodable using a standard SVC decoder. A preprocessor can be placed before an SVC decoder to extract the packets from the highest-quality bit stream. At the decoder, error concealment involves using a lightweight decoder preprocessor to generate a valid bit stream from the available network abstraction layer (NAL) units when medium-grain scalability (MGS) layers are used. Modifications are made to the NAL unit header or slice header if some NAL units of MGS layers are lost. The number of additional packets that a decoder discards as a result of a packet loss is minimized. The proposed error-resilience and error-concealment methods require little computation, which makes them suitable for real-time video streaming. Experiment results show that the proposed methods significantly reduce quality degradation caused by packet loss.

[Keywords] error resilience; error concealment; SVC; MDC