Error resilience and recovery in streaming of embedded video

The three-dimensional (3-D) SPIHT coder has proved its efficiency and its realtime capability in compression of video. A forward-error-correcting (FEC) channel (RCPC) code combined with a single ARQ (automatic-repeat-request) proved to be an effective means for protecting the bitstream. There were two problems with this scheme: the noiseless reverse channel ARQ may not be feasible in practice; and, in the absence of channel coding and ARQ, the decoded sequence was hopelessly corrupted even for relatively clean channels. In this paper, we first introduce a new partitioning method of wavelet coefficients to achieve error resilience. All of the spatio-temporal (s-t) tree blocks correspond to the whole image sequences, because we get wavelet coefficients in some fixed intervals over the whole wavelet coefficients. This procedure brings higher error resilience, since we can conceal the Preprint submitted to Elsevier Science 26 September 2001 lost coefficients with the surrounding coefficients even if some of substreams are totally missing. The bitstreams are packetized and encoded with a channel code. Then, we present an unequal error protection of video bitstreams using three dimensional SPIHT (3-D SPIHT) algorithm and our proposed 3-D SPIHT algorithm. We demonstrate that the 3-D SPIHT compressed bitstreams can also be error resilient against channel bit errors by unequally protecting the embedded video bitstreams, and more error resilient when we protect the substreams of our proposed algorithm unequally.