Main Issues in Scalable Video Coding: a Review

Abstract

Video streaming over the Internet has gained popularity during the recent years which is mainly the result of the introduction of videoconferencing and videotele-phony. These in turn have made it possible to bring to life many applications such as transmitting video over the Internet and over telephone lines, surveillance and monitoring, telemedicine (medical consultation and diagnosis at a distance), and computer based training and education. The heterogeneous, dynamic and best-effort structure of the Internet however, can not guarantee any specific bandwidth for a connection. Many video coding standards have tried to deal with this problem by introducing the scalability feature as adapting video streams to the fluctuations in the available bandwidths. In this review, we have discussed the main technical features of more common scalable video coding techniques. The main problems of these methods and their applicability together with the available motion compensated video coding methods are discussed as well.