On the Error Resilience of Rate Smoothing using Explicit Slice-Based Mode Selection

An encoder based rate smoothing scheme which uses explicit slice-based mode selection has been proposed. The algorithm provides significantly smoother bitstream from a variable bit rate (VBR) encoder and reduces the network queuing delay while maintaining quality for the end-user. In this paper we investigate the error robustness of the proposed scheme based on H.264/AVC codec. The results show that, the proposed scheme maintains error resilience properties without extra delay. Compared to the standard frame based scheme, the algorithm provides almost the same average distortion while reducing the distortion variance which helps improving the subjective video quality. We investigate the performance in random and bursty packet loss environments, and it shows that the proposed scheme is applicable for error prone networks, for example, wireless networks.