Comparison Between Multiple Description and Single Description Video Coding With Forward Error Correction

Video streaming over packet switched best-effort networks is a challenging topic, due to low latency, scalability and fault tolerance requirements. Many techniques can be used to deal with delay, loss and the time-varying nature of best-effort networks. In this paper we compare two techniques to improve the performance of video streaming, i.e., a multiple description (MD) scheme based on spatial polyphase downsampling, and a single description (SD) scheme where robustness to packet loss is increased using forward error correcting (FEC) codes. We consider both a single channel scenario and a multiple channel (or multi-path) scenario. We span a large set of channel conditions, to consider the high packet loss probabilities common in wireless communication systems. A H.264/AVC video coding standard with advanced error concealment capabilities is used. Experimental results show that MD can be competitive in practical scenarios with more flexibility and less complexity than the SD+FEC scheme