Fixed-length entropy coding for robust video compression

Abstract

Entropy coding is a fundamental stage in all video compression algorithms in terms of compression efficiency and error resilience. Variable-length entropy codes (VLC) are used in current video codecs. Designed to be employed in noiseless applications, these codes are very sensitive to transmission errors. This paper proposes the use of fixed-length entropy codes (FLC) as an alternative to VLC in video compression applications. In noisy transmissions, the FLC-based codec has shown a superior performance compared to VLC-based codecs with synchronization words, while matching its performance in terms of coding efficiency.