Applying Distributed Video Coding (DVC) to mobile devices that have limited computation and power resources can be a very challenging problem due to its high-complexity decoding. To address this, this paper proposes a DVC bitstream organizer. The proposed DVC bitstream organizer reduces the complexity associated with repetitive channel decoding and SI generation in a flexible manner. It allows users to choose a means of minimizing the computational complexity of the DVC decoder according to their preferences and the device's resource limitations. An experiment shows that the proposed method increases decoding speeds by up to 25 times.

An adaptive selective retransmission algorithm for video communications based on packet importance value is proposed. The algorithm can adaptively select the retransmission threshold in realtime and efficiently manage the retransmission process in heavy loaded networks while guaranteeing acceptable video quality at the receiver.

Based on an estimation model of video subjective quality, a bandwidth reallocation strategy for video communications on NGN is presented. Experimental results show that the average PSNR of recovery video quality can be greatly increased by using the proposed method when the network bandwidth decreases.

The transmission of duplicate packets provides a loss-resilience without undue time-delay in the video transmission over packet loss networks. However, this method generally deteriorates the problem of traffic congestion because of the increased bit-rate for duplicate packet transmission. In this paper, we propose a set of techniques for an efficient packetization and transmission of duplicate video packets. The proposed method transmits the duplicate packet containing high priority data that is quite small in volume but very important for the reconstruction of the video. This method significantly reduces the required bit-rate for duplicate transmission. An efficient packetization method is also proposed to reduce additional packet overhead which is required for transmitting the duplicate data. It is shown by simulations that the proposed method remarkably improves the packet loss-resilience for video transmission only with small increase of redundant duplicated data for each slice.

A novel error detection method based on coded block pattern (CBP) information verification is proposed for error concealment of inter-coded video frames transmitted in wireless channel. This method firstly modifies the original video stream structure by the aggregation of certain important information, and then inserts some error verification bits into the video stream for each encoded macro block (MB), these bits can be used as reference information to determine whether each encoded MB is corrupted. Experimental results on additive Gauss white noise simulation wireless channel and H.263+ baseline codec show that the proposed method can outperform other reference approaches on error detection performance. In addition, it can preserve the original video quality with a small coding overhead increase.

In this paper, a new error concealment algorithm for MPEG-4 object-based video is presented. The algorithm consists of a feature matching step to identify temporally corresponding features between video frames and an affine parameter estimation step to find the motion of the feature points. In the feature matching step, an efficient cross-radial search (CRS) method is developed to find the best matching points. In the affine parameter estimation step, a non-iterative least squares estimation algorithm is developed to estimate the affine parameters. An attractive feature of the algorithm is that the shape data and texture data are handled by the same method. Unlike previous methods, this unified approach works for the case where the video object undergoes a drastic movement, such as a sharp turn. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs much better than previous approaches by about 0.3-2.8 dB for shape data and 1.6-5.0 dB for texture data.

Compressed video bitstream is sensitive to errors that may degrade the reconstructed images severely even the bit error rate is small. One approach to combat the impact of error is error concealment at the decoder without increasing the bit rate and changing the encoder. We propose motion vector based error concealment algorithms to recover the motion vector per pixel instead of that per block according to the relation of neighboring motion vectors. The displacement per pixel can be estimated more accurately by using the tendency of neighboring motion vectors. Besides, we use not only the relation among motion vectors, but also the pixels. The pixels of the error block are divided into different parts according to their consistency with neighboring blocks and the displacement at each pixel of these parts is interpolated by relative motion vectors. From simulation results, the proposed motion vector based methods provide better reconstruction quality for damaged images than other methods.

Video transmission over Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) mobile channel employing MPEG-4 visual coding standard is proposed in this paper. Detail parameters of the proposed systems are discussed in this paper. Performance of the proposed systems was evaluated in Average Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (APSNR) versus Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and Bit Error Rate (BER). In particular, the video quality that can be achieved at different channel conditions and employing different combinations of MPEG-4 visual error resilient tools is presented in this paper. Results obtained show that higher video bitrate does not necessarily lead to higher video quality at the receiver as the received video quality depends on the bit error pattern or the number of error free video packets.

Error concealment is an essential part of reliable video communication systems because transmission errors are inevitable even when the coded bitstream is highly protected. The problem of temporal EC can be factored into two parts regarding candidate motion vectors (MVs) employed and the matching criterion to evaluate the fitness of each candidate MV. In order to obtain more faithful EC results, this paper proposes a novel iterative EC algorithm, in which an efficient way to provide candidate MVs and a new fitness measure are presented. The proposed approach for candidate MVs systematically utilizes all the available neighboring MVs by exploiting a well-known spatiotemporal correlation of block MVs. Also, in order to remove the dependency of a damaged block's quality of concealment on the already concealed adjacent blocks, we develope a new matching criterion. The objective of the proposed fitness measure is to minimize the total boundary matching errors induced by the whole corrupted blocks. Simulations performed using an H.263 codec demonstrate a significant improvement on the subjective and objective concealed video qualities, especially when the corrupted area is wider than a single row of coding blocks.

As the current Internet becomes popular in information access, demands for real-time display and playback of continuous media are ever increasing. The applications include real-time audio/video clips embedded in WWW, electronic commerce, and video-on-demand. In this paper, we present a new control protocol R3CP for real-time applications that transmit stored MPEG video stream over a lossy and best-effort based network environment like the Internet. Several control mechanisms are used: a) packet framing based on the meta data; b) adaptive queue-length based rate control scheme; c) data preloading; and d) look-ahead pre-retransmission for lost packet recovery. Different from many adaptive rate control schemes proposed in the past, the proposed flow control is to ensure continuous, periodic playback of video frames by keeping the receiver buffer queue length at a target value to minimize the probability that player finds an empty buffer. Contrary to the widespread belief that "Retransmission of lost packets is unnecessary for real-time applications," we show the effective use of combining look-ahead pre-retransmission control with proper data preloading and adaptive rate control scheme to improve the real-time playback performance. The performance of the proposed protocol is studied via simulation using actual video traces and actual delay traces collected from the Internet. The simulation results show that R3CP can significantly improve frame playback performance especially for transmission paths with poor packet delivery condition.

This paper proposes a suitable combination of the digital modulation schemes and the coding-rate of forward error correction (FEC) schemes for satellite digital video communication networks. The comparative study is carried out by computer simulation considering non-linearly amplified, narrow bandwidth satellite channels with adjacent channel interference signals. The proposed system employs an offset QPSK modulation scheme supported by the coding-rate of 7/8 convolutional encoding and Viterbi decoding to realize high-quality and compact spectrum characteristics in non-linear channels. By employing a 32Mbps DPCM video codec, the developed prototype system achieves a post demodulated S/N ratio of higher than 52dB. Moreover, it achieves high protection ratio against co-channel interference than conventional analog FM systems. The optimized digital video transmission system makes it possible to transmit high-quality NTSC video signals over non-linearly amplified narrow bandwidth satellite channels, for example 27MHz or 36MHz bandwidth transponders, with high-security digital encryption.