Bidirectional block placement in corrupted fixed-length entropy coded video streams

Abstract

Fixed length entropy codes (FLC) have been employed as an alternative to the usual variable length codes (VLC) in video codecs. The effect of a transmission error in an FLC coded stream does not propagate beyond the corrupted codeword because of its fixed parsing structure. This paper presents a new decoding algorithm for FLC compressed video streams that fully exploits the error resilience properties of FLC codes combined with spatial synchronization points. While maintaining the compression efficiency of VLC coded video streams, the proposed solution is a novel idea to combat the consequences of transmission errors and it is totally compatible with more traditional solutions such as error concealment and forward error correcting codes.