Analysis of video transmission over lossy channels

A theoretical analysis of the overall mean squared error (MSE) in hybrid vi deo coding is presented for the case of error prone transmission. Our model covers the complete transmission system including the rate-distortion perf ormance of the,ideo encoder, forward error correction, interleaving, and th e effect of error concealment and interframe error propagation at the video decoder. The channel model used is a 2-state Markov model describing burst errors on the symbol level. Reed-Solomon codes are used for forward error correction. Extensive simulation results using an H.263 video codec are pro vided for verification. Using the model, the optimal tradeoff between INTRA and INTER coding as well as the optimal channel code rate can be determine d for given channel parameters by minimizing the expected MSE at the decode r. The main focus of this paper is to show the accuracy of the derived anal ytical model and its applicability to the analysis and optimization of an e ntire video transmission system.