Scalable multiple description video coding with flexible number of descriptions

Multiple description video coding mitigates the effects of packet losses introduced by congestion and/or bit errors. In this paper, we propose a novel multiple description video coding technique, based on fully scalable wavelet video coding, which allows post encoding adaptation of the number of descriptions, the redundancy level of each description, and bitrate of each description by manipulation of the encoded bitstream. We demonstrate that the proposed method provides excellent coding efficiency, outperforming most other multiple description methods proposed so far. We also provide experimental results to show that varying the number of descriptions according to network conditions is superior to using a fixed number of descriptions, by means of NS-2 network simulation of a peer-to-peer video streaming system.