Distributed video coding based on lossy syndromes generated in hybrid pixel/transform domain

•We introduce the idea of lossy syndrome in hybrid domain for distributed video coding.•We analyze the statistics of lossy syndromes.•Lossy syndromes are applied to video coding.•Rate-distortion performance and complexity is compared with other state-of-the-art distributed video codecs.

A recently proposed class of distributed source coding based video coders enables low-complexity compression and robust transmission over unreliable channels. These architectures process the video signal either in the pixel or in the transform domain generating some side information that permits a correct decoding of the coded image from a set of possible correlated sources. The approach proposed in this paper processes the video sequence both in the pixel and in the transform domain exploiting the advantages of both schemes and generating a set of lossy syndromes. The resulting video coding scheme requires a lower computational complexity at the decoder with respect to their transform-domain counterparts (like DISCOVER or PRISM) and provides a high compression gain and an increased robustness against channel losses.