Sub-picture video coding for unequal error protection

Unequal error protection is one of the key tools in video communication systems operating over error-prone networks. In order to allow unequal protection of a video bit-stream, codewords have to be categorized according to their importance to visual quality. The proposed sub-picture coding method allows partitioning images to regions of interest and helps to maintain a good image quality in the chosen regions. As an example, the sub-picture coding scheme is applied to multicast Internet streaming. It is shown that the overall subjective image quality and the objective foreground image quality are considerably better when compared to the selected conventional coding schemes.