Real-time error concealing bitstream adaptation methods for SVC in IPTV systems

Abstract

The current heterogeneity in networks and devices demands for a high degree of flexibility in IPTV systems for digital television. A scalable video coding scheme (in this paper we focus on H.264/AVC's scalable video coding extension SVC) accommodates this flexibility from the coding point of view. Because the IP-based network delivery chain in IPTV systems may suffer from packet loss (having a severe impact on the visual quality) it is necessary to provide means for error concealment. In this paper we propose a novel method that performs adaptation on impaired SVC bitstreams so that the resulting adapted bitstream is compliant to the SVC specification and that the reconstruction result at the decoder is equivalent compared to the approach where the error concealment is implemented in the decoder itself. The adapted bitstreams have a significantly higher visual quality while our approach does not require any modification to existing SVC-compliant decoders. The results of several experiments show that the proposed method is extremely fast (over 900 frames/s) and that it introduces a negligible overhead in terms of bit rate (ca. 0.02%)

A Framework to Measure and Estimate Video Quality in SVC Real-Time Adaptive Systems

“…Proof of their importance is the large number of works studying error concealment techniques, particularly, in the SVC realm (Y. Chen et al, 2006;Lambert et al, 2009;Ma, Wu, & Sun, 2009;Park, Wang, & Ko, 2007;Pitrey et al, 2010;Pitrey et al, 2011;Stoufs et al, 2007). Among those, some ideas involve assuming a protected base layer (with FEC algorithms) as a concealment mechanism for enhancement layer losses (Pitrey et al, 2010, Pitrey et al, 2011.…”

“…Among those, some ideas involve assuming a protected base layer (with FEC algorithms) as a concealment mechanism for enhancement layer losses (Pitrey et al, 2010, Pitrey et al, 2011. Other works propose to move the concealment to a packet level, repairing damaged bitstreams to be SVC-compliant (Lambert et al, 2009). The concealment algorithms have not yet been adopted in the JSVM implementation.…”

Priority-based selective H.264 SVC video streaming over erroneous multiple networks

“…For example the region of center area is more important than the others. Thus, it is grouped as a high-priority slice group and prior to the other slice groups [1], [2]. This is the IROI (Interactive Region of Interest) technique.…”

A 2-level FEC mechanism joint with cross-layer superposition coded multicast for robust IPTV service over WiMAX

“…To date, the standardization of the scalable video coding extension of the H.264/AVC specification has been finalized [12]. The H.264/AVC video coding standard provides a high coding efficiency and has a high degree of flexibility for operation under diverse network conditions [11].…”