Replacing picture regions in H.264/AVC bitstream by utilizing independent slices

Editing compressed video is a difficult task especially when done in real-time and it usually requires video to be decoded, edited and re-encoded. However, it is important for many business models that the video content can be modified and personalized video for example with advertisements included could be delivered to end-users. This paper introduces how independently coded video regions can be used to replace the content of H.264/AVC video frames in the compressed domain to achieve personalized video content to the end-users. The compression efficiency of introduction of independent slices to video together with the complexity of slice replacement are evaluated and compared with video editing done by re-encoding. Results indicate that independent slices have a low impact on compression efficiency and that the complexity of slice replacement is very low compared to re-encoding.