An novel loss protection scheme for H.264 video stream based on Frame Error Propagation Index

In this paper, a novel GOP level unequal loss protection (G-ULP) scheme is proposed for robust H.264-coded video streaming over packet loss networks. This scheme use frame error propagation index (FEPI) to characterize video quality degradation caused by error propagation in different frames in a GOP when suffer from packet loss. A fast FEPI calculation method in compression domain is also proposed in this paper. By exploiting the unequal significance in different frames in a GOP, different amount of forward error correction (FEC) packets are allocated to different frames in a GOP. The optimal FEC allocation algorithm is based on the FEPI of each frame in the GOP. The simulation results show that the proposed G-ULP scheme can improve the receiver side reconstructed video quality remarkably under different channel loss patterns.