Optimized video streaming over lossy networks with real-time estimation of end-to-end distortion

This paper is concerned with adaptive and robust video streaming over lossy networks. A general system is described which is compatible with virtually all application settings. The delivery procedure is optimized within a rate-distortion framework with the aid of an efficient real-time end-to-end distortion estimation algorithm. The estimate fully accounts for the effects of (prior) quantization, packet loss and error propagation, as well as error concealment. It features high accuracy and low complexity, and requires a small amount of pre-computed side information. It is shown that various error-resilient schemes can be optimized within the proposed framework. In particular, unequal error protection through forward error control is employed in the simulations to demonstrate the achievable performance gains.