Amending the syntax of the MPEG-4 Simple Scalable Profile to use error resilience tools

This paper describes an amendment to the ISO/IEC 14496-2 standard commonly known as MPEG-4 video which incorporates error resilience tools in the Simple Scalable Profile of the MPEG-4 video codec, such that scalable MPEG-4 is made suitable for deployment in a mobile communication environment. This is known as the Error Resilient Simple Scalable Profile (ER-SSP). When it was defined in 2000, the syntax of the Simple Scalable Profile (SSP) prohibited the use of the error resiliency tools which were available in the base layer of the MPEG-4 codec, and which are essential for use of MPEG-4 in a mobile communication environment. This paper reports on the rationale behind the newly defined Error Resilient Simple Scalable Profile within the MPEG standard, describes the syntax for the new profile, and explains the suitability of incorporating the error resiliency tools of the base layer into the enhancement layer. It is shown that minor modifications are required in the Header Extension to synchronize the decoding process between the two layers. Hence it is shown that base layer error resilience tools are equally applicable to the enhancement layer with nominal syntax changes.