Source and channel coding trade-offs for a pulsed quality video encoder

Dual reference frame video coding uses one short-term and one long-term reference frame for motion compensation. Previous work examined uneven allocation of bits to the long-term reference frames. In this work, we examine uneven allocation of error protection to the long-term reference frames. We use a steepest descent algorithm to allocate source coding bits and channel coding bits to the long- term reference frames and to the other frames. The steepest descent algorithm provides about 2 dB improvement in PSNR compared to equal error protection and to heuristic assignment of unequal protection for the long-term references.