Reference picture selection with decreased temporal dependency for HEVC error resilience

Abstract

The high level of compression efficiency achieved by the High-Efficiency Video Coding standard (HEVC) decreases the robustness of the encoded bitstreams. This increased susceptibility to network errors leads to end video quality degradation. Moreover, due to the high computational complexity of HEVC, high-resolution video transmission with time constraints over hostile channels such as wireless networks becomes more challenging. This paper proposes a reference picture selection-based error-resilient method to reduce the temporal error propagation due to high-trip delay and frame-copy concealment error. First, the encoder selects the reference pictures based on the error status received from the feedback channel, taking into consideration the Rate-Distortion-Optimization (RDO). Second, the temporal information mismatch prediction resulting from the error concealment is reduced by decreasing the temporal dependency between adjacent frames based on new motion-estimation tools. Results show a PSNR gain of about 6.13 dB, 5.20 dB and 4.72 dB for 1080p, 720p and 480p resolutions respectively.