This paper presents an efficient switching method among non-scalable bit-streams in a multirate-based video streaming system. This method not only takes advantage of the high coding efficiency of non-scalable coding schemes (compared with scalable ones), but also allows a high flexibility in streaming services to accommodate the heterogeneity of real-world networks. One unique feature of our method is that, at every preselected switching point, the reconstructed frame at each rate or two reconstructed frames at different rates will go through an independent or a joint processing in the wavelet domain, using an SPIHT-type coding algorithm. Another important step in our method is that we will apply a novel bit allocation strategy over all hierarchical trees that are generated after the wavelet decomposition so as to achieve a significantly improved coding quality. Compared with other existing methods, our method can achieve the seamless switching at each preselected switching point with a better rate-distortion performance.
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