Transcoding of Next Generation Distributed Video Codec for Mobile Video

Abstract

Presently most popular and widely adopted video coding standards include MPEGx, H.26x, DivX, AVSx and VPx. These standards are based on predictive video coding method, where encoder is designed to be more complex (about 10x) than the decoder. These predictive video coding standards are suitable for existing applications, including broadcast and video-ondemand. However, there are other evolving applications, including wireless surveillance, multi-view, one-time-use video cameras and mobile video, which demands encoder complexity being lower. This is in contrast to the existing video coding standards. To cater to these evolving applications, “Distributed Video Coding” (DVC) has progressed as an inventive solution. The uniqueness of distributed video coding solution is its deployment of channel coding methods into the source-coding problem, in reducing encoder complexity, even at the expense of increase in complexity of the decoder. Never the less, for a sub-set of evolving applications (for e.g., mobile video), both encoder and decoder need to be of lower complexity. For this video conference application, even the DVC is also not suitable. This paper demonstrates a method for achieving low complexity encoder and decoder from the end-user point of view, by using transcoding of DVC and H.264 Advanced Video Codec (AVC) in the network. The elaborate research and proof-of-concept models developed, over a period of several years, have become the basis for this paper.