SELF-SYNCHRONIZED SYNTAX FOR ERROR-RESILIENT VIDEO CODING

Moving-picture transmission through narrow band and high bit error rat e communication channels, such as a mobile communication channel, requ ires improved compression rate and enhanced error resilience. Variable -length codes are one of the essential techniques of compressing digit al video information. This technique is used in various video coding s chemes although a bit error in the channel impairs the synchronization of variable-length codewords, resulting in propagation of the error. With a hybrid video coding method in particular, which combines motion -compensation and transform coding, once an error is detected in the c oded data, subsequent data cannot be decoded. Consequently, even an er ror-free portion of any data received must be discarded. To minimize t he influence of an error in a channel on coded video data, this paper proposes a new video coding syntax which makes the best use of the sel f-synchronizing characteristic of variable-length Huffman codes. Owing to the Huffman code's characteristic, the proposed coding syntax enab les a decoder to decode the data portion that cannot be decoded. due t o an error, by the conventional syntax without adding any redundancy. Computer simulation has verified the effectiveness of this proposed sy ntax in video coding with a very low bitrate and erroneous communicati on channel.