Novel H.264/AVC flexible macroblock ordering based on wavelet-domain partition

H.264/AVC is the latest block-based video coding standard from MPEG and VCEG It not only provides efficient video coding at various bit rates, but also uses some new error resilience tools. Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) is one of the new error resilience tools involved in H.264/AVC. Here, we present a novel algorithm, Wavelet-based Flexible Macroblock Ordering (WFMO), to adaptively allocate macroblocks into four slice groups based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), and then adopt unequal error protection to enhance the robustness of the packet carrying the slice group of importance and psychovisual sensitivity. Simulations show the proposed WFMO can partition the psychovisiually sensitive slice groups efficiently and keep better subjective video quality under poor network condition.