Slice-level rate-distortion optimized multiple description coding for H.264/AVC

We propose a novel standard-compliant multiple description coding (MDC) method that exploits the H.264/AVC redundant slice tool, performing rate-distortion optimization at the slice level. The strategy to allocate redundancy to each slice jointly takes into account its contribution to distortion, its position in the GOP, the effect of decoder error concealment, and the transmission conditions. This makes the algorithm more accurate with respect to previous frame-based solutions, and experimental results show that it compares favorably with other state-of-the-art standard-compliant MDC techniques.