Fine-grained scalable streaming from coarse-grained videos

Scalable video is an attractive option for adapting the bandwidth consumption of streaming video to the available bandwidth. Fine-grained scalability can adapt most closely to the available bandwidth, but this comes at the cost of a high compression penalty. In the context of VoD streaming to mobile end systems, we have therefore explored whether a similar adaptation to the available bandwidth can be achieved by performing layer switching in coarse-grained scalable videos. In this approach, enhancement layers of a video stream are switched on and off to achieve any desired longer-term bandwidth. We performed user studies to evaluate the idea, and came to the far-from-obvious conclusion that layer switching is viable way for bit-rate savings and fine-grained bitrate adaptation even for rather short times between layer switches. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.1 [Multimedia Information Systems]: Video General Terms Human Factors, Measurement, Experimentation Keywords Quality of...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: NOSSDAV
• Authors: Pengpeng Ni, Alexander Eichhorn, Carsten Griwodz, Pål Halvorsen
• Keywords: Available Bandwidth, Bandwidth Consumption, NOSSDAV 2009, Operating System, Scalable Video