A Mixed Layer Multiple Description Video Coding Scheme

Multiple description coding (MDC) is a technique where multiple streams from a source video are generated, each individually decodable and mutually refinable. MDC is a promising solution to overcome packet loss in video transmission over noisy channels, particularly for real-time applications in which retransmission of lost information is not practical. A problem with conventional MDC is that the achieved side distortion quality is considerably lower than single description coding (SDC) quality except at high redundancies which in turn leads to central quality degradation. In this paper, a new mixed layer MDC scheme is presented with no degradation in central quality, and providing better side quality (approximately as much as that of SDC) compared to conventional methods. Also, this property directly leads to higher average quality when delivering the video in lossy networks. For each discrete cosine transform coefficient, we generate two coefficients: base coefficient (BC) and enhancement coefficient which are combined together. When all descriptions are available, they are decomposed and decoded to achieve high quality video. When one description is not available, we use estimation to extract as much of the BC as possible from the received description. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme leads to an improved redundancy-rate-distortion performance compared to conventional methods. The algorithm is implemented in JM16.0 and its performance for two-description and four-description coding is verified by experiments.