Error-resilient performance of Dirac video codec over packet-erasure channel

Video transmission over the wireless or wired network requires error-resilient mechanism since compressed video bitstreams are sensitive to transmission errors because of the use of predictive coding and variable length coding. This paper investigates the performance of a simple and low complexity error-resilient coding scheme which combines source and channel coding to protect compressed bitstream of wavelet-based Dirac video codec in the packet-erasure channel. By partitioning the wavelet transform coefficients of the motion-compensated residual frame into groups and independently processing each group using arithmetic and Forward Error Correction (FEC) coding, Dirac could achieves the robustness to transmission errors by giving the video quality which is gracefully decreasing over a range of packet loss rates up to 30% when compared with conventional FEC only methods. Simulation results also show that the proposed scheme using multiple partitions can achieve up to 10 dB PSNR gain over its existing un-partitioned format. This paper also investigates the error-resilient performance of the proposed scheme in comparison with H.264 over packet-erasure channel

Video transmission over a relay channel with a compress-forward code design

There is an increasing demand to support high data rate multimedia applications over the current day wireless networks which are highly prone to errors. Relay channels, by virtue of their spatial diversity, play a vital role in meeting this demand without much change to the current day systems. A compress-forward relaying scheme is one of the exciting prospects in this regard owing to its ability to always outperform direct transmission. With regards to video transmission, there is a serious need to ensure higher protection for the source bits that are more important and sensitive. The objective of this thesis is to develop a practical scheme for transmitting video data over a relay channel using a compress-forward relaying scheme and compare it to direct and multi-hop transmissions. We also develop a novel scheme whereby the relay channel can be used as a means to provide the required unequal error protection among the MPEG-2 bit stream. The area of compress-forward (CF) relaying has not been developed much to date, with most of the research directed towards the decode-forward scheme. The fact that compress-forward relaying always ensures better results than direct transmission is an added advantage. This has motivated us to employ CF relaying in our implementation. Video transmission and streaming applications are being increasingly sought after in the current generation wireless systems. The fact that video applications are bandwidth demanding and error prone, and the wireless systems are band-limited and unreliable, makes this a challenging task. CF relaying, by virtue of their path diversity, can be considered to be a new means for video transmission. To exploit the above advantages, we propose an implementation for video transmission over relay channels using a CF relaying scheme. Practical gains in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) have been observed for our implementation compared to the simple binary-input additive white Gaussian noise (BIAWGN) and two-hop transmission scenarios

Loss-resilient Coding of Texture and Depth for Free-viewpoint Video Conferencing

Free-viewpoint video conferencing allows a participant to observe the remote 3D scene from any freely chosen viewpoint. An intermediate virtual viewpoint image is commonly synthesized using two pairs of transmitted texture and depth maps from two neighboring captured viewpoints via depth-image-based rendering (DIBR). To maintain high quality of synthesized images, it is imperative to contain the adverse effects of network packet losses that may arise during texture and depth video transmission. Towards this end, we develop an integrated approach that exploits the representation redundancy inherent in the multiple streamed videos a voxel in the 3D scene visible to two captured views is sampled and coded twice in the two views. In particular, at the receiver we first develop an error concealment strategy that adaptively blends corresponding pixels in the two captured views during DIBR, so that pixels from the more reliable transmitted view are weighted more heavily. We then couple it with a sender-side optimization of reference picture selection (RPS) during real-time video coding, so that blocks containing samples of voxels that are visible in both views are more error-resiliently coded in one view only, given adaptive blending will erase errors in the other view. Further, synthesized view distortion sensitivities to texture versus depth errors are analyzed, so that relative importance of texture and depth code blocks can be computed for system-wide RPS optimization. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can outperform the use of a traditional feedback channel by up to 0.82 dB on average at 8% packet loss rate, and by as much as 3 dB for particular frames

Enabling error-resilient internet broadcasting using motion compensated spatial partitioning and packet FEC for the dirac video codec

Video transmission over the wireless or wired network require protection from channel errors since compressed video bitstreams are very sensitive to transmission errors because of the use of predictive coding and variable length coding. In this paper, a simple, low complexity and patent free error-resilient coding is proposed. It is based upon the idea of using spatial partitioning on the motion compensated residual frame without employing the transform coefficient coding. The proposed scheme is intended for open source Dirac video codec in order to enable the codec to be used for Internet broadcasting. By partitioning the wavelet transform coefficients of the motion compensated residual frame into groups and independently processing each group using arithmetic coding and Forward Error Correction (FEC), robustness to transmission errors over the packet erasure wired network could be achieved. Using the Rate Compatibles Punctured Code (RCPC) and Turbo Code (TC) as the FEC, the proposed technique provides gracefully decreasing perceptual quality over packet loss rates up to 30%. The PSNR performance is much better when compared with the conventional data partitioning only methods. Simulation results show that the use of multiple partitioning of wavelet coefficient in Dirac can achieve up to 8 dB PSNR gain over its existing un-partitioned method