Temporal layered vs. multistate video coding

Abstract

Multiple Description Video Coding (MDC) and Layered Coding (LC) are both error-resilient source coding techniques used for transmission over error-prone channels. Both techniques generate multiple streams. The streams generated by MDC correspond to different descriptions of the same source whereas the streams produced by LC are differentiated as base and enhancement layer streams. Moreover whereas the MDC streams are independently decodable the decoding of the enhancement layer stream is dependent on the decoding of the base layer stream. In this work we concentrate on specific MDC and LC schemes, i.e. Multi-State Video Coding (MSVC) and Temporal Layered Coding (TLC). MSVC was introduced by John Apostolopoulos and it was showed that if each frame is transmitted in a separate packet and if motion information for each lost frame is also lost, MSVC outperforms Single Layer Coding (SC) in recovering from single as well as burst losses. Here we compared MSVC with TLC as an extension of SC based on transmission simulations over lossy channels under the assumption that the motion vectors are always available. Using different coding modes and specific reconstruction methods average reconstructed frame PSNR (peak signal to noise ratio) is measured and compared. Results show that when motion vectors are received TLC performs better than MSVC for every coding option tested. The performance difference is bigger for low motion sequences.