Multiple description coding: Difference between revisions

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'''Multiple Description Coding (MDC)''' is a coding technique which fragments a single media stream into n independent sub streams (n >= 2) referred to as descriptions. The packets of each description are routed over multiple, (partially) disjoint pathes. In order to decode the media stream, any description can be used, however, the quality improves with the number of descriptions received in parallel. The idea of MDC is to provide error resilience to media streams. Since an arbitrary subset of descriptions can be used to decode the original stream, network congestion or packet loss — which are common in best-effort networks such as the Internet — will not interrupt the stream but only cause a (temporary) loss of quality. The quality of a stream can be expected to be roughly proportional to data rate sustained by the receiver.