Unequal Error Protection of H.264/AVC video bitstreams based on data partitioning and motion information of slices

This paper presents new schemes of Unequal Error Protection (UEP) for video bitstreams compressed by H.264/AVC standard. Proposed UEPs are implemented in two levels. The first level is performed based on specifications of data partitioning recognized as one of the most important and conventional error resilience tools for wireless video transmission systems. The second level is based on determining the size of motion information, which are allocated to the most important partition of a frame or slice. Suitable Forward Error Correcting (FEC) codes with various rates are applied for different partitions according to their importance. Conducted simulations confirm that presented techniques significantly improve performance of video bitstreams, while their overall transmission rates are maintained at the same rate as Equal Error Protection (EEP) technique. Improvements are mainly achieved for videos with the high number of motion information.