Network performance analysis of advanced video coding schemes

Advanced video coding schemes, currently under investigation, provide greater bandwidth efficiency than existing schemes. However, the network resources required by these advanced-coded video streams have not yet been fully investigated. In this paper, we present a network performance analysis of recent video coding schemes, such as H.264 coding and PFGS coding. The robustness of these coding schemes to channel losses is evaluated using video sequences containing various motion activity levels. Simulation results showed that H.264 streams require larger buffering at the decoder, to overcome the higher delay variations seen over lossy packet networks. PFGS streams were found to produce reconstruction qualities superior to FGS streams, if the maximum rate of the enhancement layer is selected based on the receiver capabilities. This paper also proposes a framework for quality monitoring of the reconstructed video, after transmission over lossy packet networks and application of appropriate error concealment techniques. The proposed framework is flexible enough to be used with any structure of frame types, and any level of motion activities in the underlying video sequence.