Media streaming over unreliable networks such as

the Internet is growing in popularity, but presents unique challenges

when trying to get the user experience to be on par with

classical mediums such as cable television. These networks have

variable network conditions which not only vary between a set of

points in the network, but also change over time. In this paper, we

present a rate-distortion (R-D) optimized algorithm for adapting

the bitrate of streaming media from a chunked encoding, where

each chunk is available at multiple bitrates (or quality levels) or

is scalable coded. The optimization takes into account the desired

startup latency, the desired client buffer size, the current client

buffer size, and the estimated network bandwidth. The problem

is formulated as a distortion minimization problem subject to

multiple rate constraints. For video content, the solution gives a

gain of up to 3-4dB in PSNR in difficult portions of the video

when compared to commonly used adaptation techniques and

can achieve an arbitrarily small desired startup latency.

PDF file

In  Proc. Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing

Publisher  IEEE
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