Unequal error protection of H.264/AVC video bitstreams based on the motion energy estimation for group of pictures

A multi-level error protection technique for H.264/AVC video bitstreams is proposed. Error protection levels for video frames are determined based on frames´ motion activities and the importance of the Group of Pictures (GOP) containing the considered frames. The motion activity of a frame is evaluated by the majority of macroblocks having high motion energy, which is defined as the energy necessary for macroblocks movement between two consecutive frames. Then, the importance of a GOP is determined based on the estimation of motion energy of previous GOPs. Simulation results show that the proposed technique provides better video quality compared to other GOP-based Unequal Error Protection (UEP) techniques.