Improved Video Decoding Through Synchronization Code Detection

Many video codecs rely on a periodically embedded codes to maintain synchronization. In order to increase system robustness, we propose a detection algorithm to determine synchronization code location. The associated metric relies on knowledge of the distribution of the locations of codes within the compressed data. These distributions are modeled as functions of sequence type and compression rate, and communicated to the decoder with insignificant increase in overhead. Results for the H.264 coder show a performance increase of over 3 dB for selected scenarios.