In this paper, we propose an unequal protection physical coding sub-layer (PCS) forward error correction (FEC) scheme for efficient and high-quality transmission of video data over optical access networks. Through identifying and resolving the unequal importance of different video frames and passing this importance information from MAC-layer to PCS, FEC scheme of PCS can be adaptive to application-layer data. Meanwhile, we jointly consider the different channel situations of optical network unit (ONU) and improve the efficiency of FEC redundancy by channel adaptation. We develop a theoretical algorithm and a hardware method to achieve efficient FEC assignment for the proposed unequal protection scheme. The theoretical FEC assignment algorithm is to obtain the optimal FEC redundancy allocation vector that results in the optimum performance index, namely frame error rate, based on the identified differential importance and channel situations. The hardware method aims at providing a realistic technical path with negligible hardware cost increment compared with the traditional FEC scheme. From the simulation results, the proposed Channel and Application-layer data Adaptation Unequal Protection (CAAUP) FEC scheme along with the FEC ratio assignment algorithm and the hardware method illustrates the ability of efficient and high-quality transmission of video data against the random errors in the channel of optical access networks.