Multiple region-of-interest support in scalable video coding

In this letter, we propose a new functionality to scalable video coding (SVC), that is, the support of multiple region of interests (ROIs) for heterogeneous display resolution. The main objective of SVC is to provide temporal spatial, and quality scalability of an encoded bitstream. The ROI is an area that is semantically important to a particular user especially users with heterogeneous display resolutions. Less transmission bandwidth is needed compared to when the entire region is transmitted/decoded and then sub-sampled or cropped. To support multiple ROIs in SVC, we adopt flexible macroblock ordering (FMO), a tool defined in H.264, and based on it, we propose a way to encode and, independently, decode ROIs. The proposed method is implemented on the joint scalable video model (JSVM) and its functionality verified.