Fine-granularity spatially scalable video coding

We propose a novel architecture for spatially scalable video coding, namely, fine-granularity spatially scalable (FGSS) coding. The traditional layered spatially scalable coding provides only coarse scalability in which the bit-stream can be decoded only at a few fixed resolutions, but not something in between. The proposed FGSS scheme provides a fine-granularity property to the spatial scalability. In this scheme, the bit plane technique is combined with spatial scalability, thus a fine granularity increase in the image quality from low-resolution to high-resolution can be obtained. In addition, the proposed scheme provides a flexible embedded bitstream that can be decoded up to any point in the enhancement layer bitstream from low-resolution to high-resolution. This feature further enables efficient video streaming over the Internet where the scalable bitstream, can adapt to the widely fluctuating bandwidth. The FGSS coding scheme extends new functionalities such as multi-resolution, fine granularity, channel adaptation and error-recovery properties to scalable video coding, thus it can satisfy different user clients with a wide range of channel bandwidth and screen resolution.