A method and apparatus for utilizing temporal prediction and motion compensated prediction to accomplish multiple description video coding is disclosed. An encoder receives a sequence of video frames and divides each frame into non-overlapping macromacroblocks. Each macromacroblock is then encoded using either an intraframe mode (I-mode) or a prediction mode (P-mode) technique. Both the I-mode and the P-mode encoding techniques produce an output for each of n channels used to transmit the encoded video data to a decoder.