Feedback channel in pixel domain Wyner-Ziv video coding: Myths and realities

Wyner-Ziv (WZ) video coding - a particular case of distributed video coding (DVC) - is a new video coding paradigm based on two major Information Theory results: the Slepian-Wolf and Wyner-Ziv theorems. Recently, practical WZ video coding solutions were proposed with promising results. Many of the solutions available in the literature make use of a feedback channel (FC) to perform rate control at the decoder. In this context, this paper intends to analyse the impact of this feedback channel, notably through a number of metrics such as the frequency the feedback channel is used as well as its associated rate. It is also presented a study on the evolution of the decoded frames quality as more parity bits are requested via feedback channel. Those measures are important since they allow characterizing the usage of the feedback channel, and have never been presented in the literature.