Dynamic redundancy allocation for video streaming using Sub-GOP based FEC code

Abstract

Reed-Solomon erasure code is one of the most studied protection methods for video streaming over unreliable networks. As a block-based error correcting code, large block size and increased number of parity packets will enhance its protection performance. However, for video applications this enhancement is sacrificed by the error propagation and the increased bitrate. So, to tackle this paradox, we propose a rate-distortion optimized redundancy allocation scheme, which takes into consideration the distortion caused by losing each slice and the propagated error. Different from other approaches, the amount of introduced redundancy and the way it is introduced are automatically selected without human interventions based on the network condition and video characteristics. The redundancy allocation problem is formulated as a constraint optimization problem, which allows to have more flexibility in setting the block-wise redundancy. The proposed scheme is implemented in JM14.0 for H.264, and it achieves an average gain of 1dB over the state-of-the-art approach.