Modeling and Optimization of a Systematic Lossy Error Protection System based on H . 264 / AVC Redundant Slices ⋆

We model the decoded picture quality at the output of a Systematic Lossy Error Protection (SLEP) scheme for error-resilient transmission of H.264/AVC compressed video signals. In this scheme, a video signal transmitted without channel coding constitutes the systematic portion of the transmission. Errorresilience is provided by transmitting a supplementary bit stream generated by Wyner-Ziv encoding. Our Wyner-Ziv codec uses H.264/AVC redundant slices in conjunction with Reed Solomon coding. When channel errors occur, the Wyner-Ziv bit stream allows the decoding of a coarsely quantized description of the video signal, which is used for lossy error protection. We study the error-resilience properties of SLEP using the model equations and utilize them for optimization of the SLEP system. Index Terms : Wyner-Ziv coding, distributed video coding, side information, systematic source-channel coding, H.264/AVC, redundant slices.