Multiple Description Coding Using Data Hiding and Regions of Interest for Broadcasting Applications

We propose an innovative scheme for multiple description coding (MDC) with regions of interest (ROI) support to be adopted in high-quality television. The scheme proposes to split thestream into two separate descriptors and to preserve the quality of the region of interest, even in caseone descriptor is completely lost. The residual part of the frame (the background) is instead modeledthrough a checkerboard pattern, alternating the strength of the quantization. The decoder is providedwith the necessary side-information to reconstruct the frame properly, namely, the ROI parameters andlocation, via a suitable data hiding procedure. Using data hiding, reconstruction parameters are embeddedin the transform coefficients, thus allowing an improvement in PSNR of the single descriptions at thecost of a negligible overhead. To demonstrate its effectiveness, the algorithm has been implemented intwo different scenarios, using the reference H.264/AVC codec and an MJPEG framework to evaluate theperformance in absence of motion-compensated frames on 720p video sequences