An Overview of the SVC4QoE project

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the SVC4QoE project which purpose is to use Scalable Video Coding (SVC) to optimize video transmission in terms of Quality of Experience over DVB-T2 channels. The originality of this project is to consider the influence of the whole chain of treatments performed on the video data in terms of user-perceived quality. The encoding process, as well as transmission, decoding and display are included in the optimization process. Particularly, the multi-layer structure of SVC is to be exploited to circumvent alterations of the video related to transmission on error-prone networks. Combining SVC with QoE thus provides a way to reduce network operating costs, while increasing the quality from the user's point of view. Several innovations are also to be mentioned, such as the use of a real-time open-source SVC decoder, evaluation of visual quality through subjective quality assessment tests, transmission and synchronization of SVC layers on the receiver's side, and development of a DVB-T2 Gateway which implements the multi-PLP functional-ity in an SVC context