Error Resilient Motion Estimation and Mode Decision for Robust H.264/AVC Video Transmission

Due to temporal prediction, via motion vectors, adopted in most video coding standards, video quality is substantially degraded at decoder side as a result of error propagation. In order to enhance robustness of existing temporal-prediction-based techniques, one prediction strategy, called error resilient motion estimation (ERME), to take both coding efficiency and error propagation into considerations is proposed in this paper. A similar concept is applied to the problem of mode decision for H.264/AVC videos, called error resilient mode decision (ERMD), so as to choose an optimal mode (intra-prediction or variable block sizes for motion estimation) for robust video transmission. Experiment results show that the integration of these two algorithms really enhances the robustness of H.264/AVC videos and outperforms traditional algorithms by 1~7 dB at a packet loss rate of 15%.