Evaluating packet erasure recovery techniques for video streaming

In real time video transmission over Internet Protocol (IP), to make the video stream more resilient against packet loss in the network, packet erasure coding (EC) is applied as one form of packet loss concealment. The separation of source and channel coding even though sub optimum, offers the convenience of simplified implementations. In the framework of separate video and channel coding, significant benefits can be derived from understanding how to jointly adjust the video and packet erasure coding parameters to improve the quality of the reconstructed media after packet erasure recovery. To this end, in this paper, a testbed is presented for the evaluation of a real time encoding of interactive video applications with packet erasure coding at the IP layer. Specifically, practical video CODECs like H.264/AVC with different packetization strategies are deployed to test the improvements obtained in the recovered video stream for different coding rates in packet erasure codes. Quality of video is analyzed using PSNR of reconstructed video frames under different raw packet loss rates (PLRs) and for different packet sizes.