A sequence-based error-concealment algorithm for an unbalanced multiple description video coding system

Video transmission over unreliable networks presents new challenges for research in video coding. In fact, in video coders that use predictive coding schemes, even a single packet loss may cause errors during the decoding process propagating in time. A way to increase the robustness of the coded stream and reduce the length of error propagation is the use of a multiple description coding (MDC) technique. The aim of this paper is to apply a novel sequence-based error-concealment (EC) algorithm to an unbalanced MD video coding system that generates both a high-quality (HQ) and a low-quality (LQ) description. In order to recover a loss in the current frames, the EC algorithm takes into account not only the spatial/temporal neighboring of the region the lost data correspond to, but also what is going to happen in a significant number of future frames looking both the HQ and the LQ descriptions. The sequence-based EC algorithm presents good performances when applied to video streams. The comparison with concurrent error-resilience techniques shows interesting results. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.