Compressed video is vulnerable to transmission errors when transmitted over unreliable channels. In this paper

a two-step multi-weighted boundary-matching algorithm (TMBMA) for video error concealment is proposed to combat the transmission errors. With this algorithm

the motion vector (MV) of damaged block can be estimated by making full use of information of blocks around the damaged one. A pre-concealment is implemented to improve video frame quality to some degree and then the multi-weighted boundary-matching algorithm is used to evaluate every MV candidate of the damaged block. The MV candidate giving the minimum boundary-matching differences is selected to conceal the damaged block and video frame quality can be improved further. The disadvantages of side matching algorithm (SMA)

such as incorrect MB displacement at object border and poor performance when one entire frame or plenty of consecutive GOBs are lost

are overcome with this algorithm. It is proved by H.263 simulation results that satisfactory concealment performance can be achieved by effectively controlling the propagation of video errors.