Multicast video synchronization via MPEG-4 FGS/XML representation

A solution to the re-synchronization problem in the layered video multicast, based on the MPEG-4 FGS/XML representation, is proposed. A raw video file is encoded into the MPEG-4 FGS format that consists of the base layer and enhancement layers. The corresponding XML trees are built using the integrated MPEG-4 FGS/XML parser simultaneously. The XML representation of MPEG-4 FGS video presents an accurate and randomly accessible tree structure to interact with the standard MPEG-4 encoder/decoder. Under the assumption that the XML documents can be transmitted via the reliable TCP protocol at the same time when the MPEG-4 FGS bitstream is delivered, we can demonstrate that the difficult resynchronization problem in layered video multicast can be easily tackled with the assistance of the XML description.