Multiple description video coding based on adaptive data reuse

•Propose an adaptive data reuse multiple description coding method for robust video transmission.•Group four sub-sequences obtained by spatial down-sample operation into two descriptions.•Develop adaptive data reuse scheme using spatial and temporal correlations among sub-sequences.•Indirectly encode and decode selected sub-sequences based on adaptive data reuse criterion.•Experimental results clearly justify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.

In this paper, an efficient multiple description coding (MDC) method, called the adaptive data reuse MDC (ADR-MDC), is proposed for robust video transmission. The proposed ADR-MDC first groups four sub-sequences, which are generated by performing spatial down-sample operation on each frame of input video sequence, into two descriptions. In each description, one sub-sequence is directly encoded and decoded by applying the H.264/AVC encoder and decoder, while the other is encoded and decoded at each macroblock (MB) based on the adaptive data reuse criterion, which are developed by making full use of the spatial and temporal correlations among the sub-sequences. Experimental results have shown that the proposed ADR-MDC scheme possesses higher error resilient ability and obtains better reconstructed video than the existing state-of-the-art MDC method.