Parameter Selection for a Video Communication System based on HEVC and Channel Coding

A low delay video transmission over error prone channels with limited bandwidth requires both video and channel coding. A reduction of the distortions added to the video sequence by the video coding and through the channel can be achieved by selecting appropriate configuration parameters for both codecs. In this paper we address this problem from a bit-allocation perspective under the joint source-channel coding approach. We propose an evaluation methodology with a new metric that allows the measurement of the overall distortion of a video communication system. Experimental results, for a system conformed by High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and a channel coding with variable coding rate, demonstrate the procedure to evaluate the video communication system and to find a suitable parameter set to reduce the overall distortion of the video at the receiver. For the evaluated system, it was also found a bit allocation strategy between the video and channel codec that reduces the overall distortion. It gives less protection against errors from the channel while reduces the distortion introduced by the video encoder.