A joint source-channel decoder for H.264 SPS and PPS headers

This paper proposes a joint source-channel decoder (JSCD) to decode the Sequence Parameter Set (SPS) and Picture Parameter Set (PPS) headers for the H.264 encoded video sequence. Erroneously received headers can render the entire video sequence un-decodable. By exploiting the syntax and semantics of the headers as well as certain a priori information, our proposed JSCD is capable of reducing the probability of erroneous headers and hence improving the overall PSNR of the video by as high as 3 dB.