Multiple description for robust Scalable Video Coding

Scalable video coding (SVC) was recently standardized as an extension of the H.264/AVC standard. A scalable coder allows to combine different layers of spatial, temporal and quality scalability, and is a viable solution for adaptation to user characteristics and network conditions. On the other hand, Multiple description coding (MDC) can provide error resilience and graceful quality degradation for transmission over error-prone channels. In this paper, we propose a video codec that combines the SVC and MDC coding paradigms. In particular, the enhancement data of the SVC coder are transmitted using MDC. The resulting fully compatible coder takes advantage of the efficiency of SVC and of the robustness of MDC techniques. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is confirmed by experiments.