A video transmission system includes an encoder and a decoder. Data may be lost during video encoding and transmission, which leads to errors in reconstructing the video images by the decoder. A return channel couples the encoder and decoder so that errors detected by the decoder are made available to the encoder. Depending on the percentage of the image not received, refresh operations are performed. An on-demand intra-refresh operation is done when the percentage of the image needed to be refreshed is below a specified level. A random intra-refresh operation is done when the percentage of the image needed to be refreshed exceeds the level.