A Multiple Description Video Codec With Adaptive Residual Distributed Coding

Multiple description coding (MDC) decomposes one single media into several descriptions and transmits them over different channels for error resilience. Each description contributes to improving the reconstructed media quality when decoded. Distributed video coding (DVC) encodes multiple correlated images and utilizes error correction codes to shift the codec complexity to a joint decoder. Combining MDC with DVC (MDVC) yields a stable codec for mobile encoders. In this paper, to improve the MDVC codec performance, image correlations among the MDVC processing modules were exploited to improve reconstructed video quality and enhance transmission robustness. At the side encoder, a DVC-based adaptive differential pulse code modulation was designed to remove interframe redundancy to enhance rate-distortion performances. For the MDVC central decoding, intradescription and interdescription correlations were utilized to dynamically select the best reconstructed frames from two descriptions, instead of selecting just one description or all key-frames from two descriptions. Experiments showed that, as compared to previous methods, the proposed MDVC control method yielded 1-2 dB higher in image PSNRs for Wyner-Ziv reconstructed frames at the side decoder when encoding low-to-medium complexity videos. For high-complexity videos, it effectively prevents error correction of Wyner-Ziv frames from malfunctioning and yields about 3 dB higher in PSNR. The proposed MDVC central decoder control yields 1-4 dB higher PSNRs, as compared to side decoders. Under lossy transmission, it demonstrates 27-64% smaller PSNR variations, as compared to that of combining key-frames as the decoded video. The proposed MDVC system and control not only improve the DVC reconstructed video quality, but also reduce the quality fluctuation artifacts of MDC coded video for mobile coders.