Scalable object-based video multicasting over the Internet

This paper presents a bitstream classification, prioritization, and transmission scheme specifically designed for MPEG-4 video consisting of multiple video objects (MVO). Different types of data in the compressed bitstream such as shape, motion, and texture are re-assembled and assigned to different priority classes. We then propose a heterogeneous multicasting scheme for efficient packet delivery in a multi-party environment. Our proposed multicasting method is a single-layer solution with the advantage of multi-layer multicasting without the need of separate network sessions. Performance evaluation and test results indicate the advantages of the proposed scalable video transmission and multicasting scheme.