A novel MPEG-4 based hybrid temporal-SNR scalability for Internet video

Transmission of video over bandwidth-varying networks (e.g. the Internet) requires a highly scalable solution that is capable of adapting to the network condition in real-time. To address this requirement, scalable video coding schemes with multiple enhancement-layers have been proposed. However, under this multiple-layer paradigm, the transmission bitrate of each layer has to be predetermined at encoding time. Consequently, the range of bitrates that can be covered with these compression schemes is limited and often lower-than or different from the desired range required at transmission time. In this paper, a novel scalable video-coding framework and a corresponding compression method for Internet video streaming is introduced. Building upon the MPEG-4 fine-granular-scalability (FGS) approach, the proposed framework provides a new level of abstraction between the encoding and transmission-process by supporting both SNR and temporal scalability through a single enhancement layer. Consequently, our proposed approach enables streaming systems to support full SNR, full temporal, and hybrid SNR-temporal scalability in real-time depending on available bandwidth, packet-loss patterns, user preferences, and/or receiver complexity.