Adaptive spatial error concealment (SEC) with more accurate MB type decision in H.264/AVC

Transmission of compressed video over error prone channels may result in packet losses or errors, which can significantly degrade the image quality. Therefore an error concealment scheme is applied at the video receiver side to mask the damaged video. Considering there are 3 types of MBs (macro blocks) in natural video frame, i.e., Textural MB, Edged MB, and Smooth MB, this paper proposes an adaptive spatial error concealment which can choose 3 different methods for these 3 different MBs. For choice of the appropriate method, 2 factors are taken into consideration. Firstly, standard deviation of our proposed edge statistical model is exploited. Secondly, some new features of latest video compression standard H.264/AVC, i.e., intra prediction mode is also considered for criterion formulation. Compared with previous approaches, which are only based on deterministic measurement, proposed method achieves more accurate MB type decision which leads to better image recovery. Subjective and objective image quality evaluations in experiments confirmed this.