This paper addresses the problem of streaming packetizedfl

media over a lossy packet network in a rate-distortion optimizedfl

way. We show that although the data units in a media presentationfl

generally depend on each other according to a directedfl

acyclic graph, the problem of rate-distortion optimized streamingfl

of an entire presentation can be reduced to the problem of errorcostfl

optimized transmission of an isolated data unit.We show howfl

to solve the latter problem in a variety of scenarios, including thefl

important common scenario of sender-driven streaming with feedbackfl

over a best-effort network, which we couch in the frameworkfl

of Markov decision processes.We derive a fast practical algorithmfl

for nearly optimal streaming in this scenario, and we derivefl

a general purpose iterative descent algorithm for locally optimalfl

streaming in arbitrary scenarios. Experimental results show thatfl

systems based on our algorithms have steady-state gains of 2–6 dBfl

or more over systems that are not rate-distortion optimized. Furthermore,fl

our systems essentially achieve the best possible performance:fl

the operational distortion-rate function of the source at thefl

capacity of the packet erasure channel.

PDF file

In: IEEE Trans. Multimedia

Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
© 2006 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

Details