A two-stage multiple description video coder with drift-preventing motion compensated prediction

In this paper, we propose a very simple, but efficient two-stage MDC in the central prediction loop based on Reibman's three-prediction-loop structure (Reibman et al. (1999)). In our design, an additional multiple description scalar quantizer (MDSQ) is introduced into the central prediction loop. The encoding of the side information is modified in such a way that it can be used to improve the video quality when no drift occurs, but still maintain drift prevention capability. The simulation results with different video sequences at various packet loss rates demonstrate that the proposed two-stage MDC structure indeed enhances the quality by about 0.25 dB when the channel is error-free, yet effectively avoids drift when one description is completely lost.