Multiple Description Scalable Coding for Error Resilient Video Transmission over Packet Networks

Two types of scalabilities exist in current scalable video streaming schemes: (1) nested scalability, in which different representations (i.e., descriptions) of each frame are generated using layered scalable coding and have to be decoded in a fixed sequential order, and (2) parallel scalability, which is used in multiple description coding (MDC) where different descriptions are mutually refinable and independently decodable. In this paper, we present a general framework that includes both scalabilities and demonstrate the similarity between the leaky prediction based layered coding and an MDC scheme that uses motion compensation. Based on this framework, we introduce nested scalability into each description of the MDC stream and propose a fine granularity scalability (FGS) based MDC approach. We also develop a scalable video coding structure that is characterized by the dual-leaky prediction to balance the trade-off between coding efficiency and the error resilience performance of the coded bit stream.