Quality-driven streaming

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10880349-B2
Application number	US-201816189649-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 13, 2018
Priority date	Jul 10, 2012
Publication date	Dec 29, 2020
Grant date	Dec 29, 2020

Abstract

Quality-based optimizations of a delivery process of streaming content may be enabled. The optimization may take the form of quality-based switching. To enable quality-based switching in a streaming client, the client may have access to information about the quality of an encoded segment and/or sub-segment. Quality-related information may include any number of added quality metrics relating to an encoded segment and/or sub-segment of an encoded video stream. The addition of quality-related information may be accomplished by including the quality-related information in a manifest file, including the quality-related information in segment indices stored in a segment index file, and/or providing additional files with quality-related segment information and providing a link to the information from an MPD file. Upon receiving the quality-related information, the client may request and receive a stream that has a lower bitrate, thereby saving bandwidth while retaining quality of the streaming content.

First claim

What is claimed:

1. A method performed by a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU), the method comprising:
receiving a manifest file comprising a description of a plurality of segments of media content, wherein each segment represents a time-based portion of the media content, and wherein the manifest file indicates a bitrate and an absolute quality level for each of the plurality of segments;
selecting a segment of the plurality of segments based on the bitrate and the absolute quality level associated with the segment of the media content;
sending a request for the segment of the media content; and
receiving the requested segment of the media content.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the absolute quality level comprises at least one of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM), video quality metric (VQM), visual information fidelity (VIF), J.341, or mean opinion score (MOS).

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manifest file comprises a media presentation description (MPD) file.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manifest file further comprises a description of a plurality of representations of the media content, and wherein each representation comprises at least one segment of the media content.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manifest file specifies the same time interval of the media content for each segment of the plurality of segments.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the segment is selected based on the segment having a lowest bitrate of the plurality of segments that have at least a threshold absolute quality level and that are defined by the manifest file to have the same time interval of the media content.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manifest file comprises a segment index file.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the segment index file comprises at least one of an MP4 file or an M4S file.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the segment index file comprises an ISOBMFF-based file container comprising at least one box, and wherein a segment quality parameter is included within the at least one box of the ISOBMFF-based file container.

10. The method of claim 1 , comprising:
receiving a presence of the absolute quality level via a flag in the manifest file.

11. A wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) comprising:
a processor configured to:
receive a manifest file comprising a description of a plurality of segments of media content, wherein each segment represents a time-based portion of the media content, and wherein the manifest file indicates a bitrate and an absolute quality level for each of the plurality of segments;
select a segment of the plurality of segments based on the bitrate and the absolute quality level associated with the segment of the media content;
send a request for the segment of the media content; and
receive the requested segment of the media content.

12. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the absolute quality level comprises at least one of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM), video quality metric (VQM), visual information fidelity (VIF), J.341, or mean opinion score (MOS).

13. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the manifest file comprises a media presentation description (MPD) file.

14. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the manifest file further comprises a description of a plurality of representations of the media content, and wherein each representation comprises at least one segment of the media content.

15. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the manifest file specifies the same time interval of the media content for each segment of the plurality of segments.

16. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the processor is configured to select the segment based on the segment having a lowest bitrate of the plurality of segments that have at least a threshold absolute quality level and that are defined by the manifest file to have the same time interval of the media content.

17. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the manifest file comprises a segment index file.

18. The WTRU of claim 17 , wherein the segment index file comprises at least one of an MP4 file or an M4S file.

19. The WTRU of claim 17 , wherein the segment index file comprises an ISOBMFF-based file container comprising at least one box, and wherein a segment quality parameter is included within the at least one box of the ISOBMFF-based file container.

20. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the processor is configured to receive a presence of the absolute quality level via a flag in the manifest file.

Assignees

• Vid Scale Inc

Inventors

• Reznik Yuriy
• Asbun Eduardo
• Chen Zhifeng
• Vanam Rahul

Classifications

• H04N21/24

  Monitoring of processes or resources, e.g. monitoring of server load, available bandwidth, upstream requests {(monitoring of server performance or load G06F11/34; arrangements for observation, testing or troubleshooting for broadcast or for distribution combined with broadcast H04H20/12)} · CPC title

• H04N21/23439

  for generating different versions · CPC title

• H04L65/60 Primary

  Network streaming of media packets · CPC title

• H04L65/762

  at the source  (reformatting of additional data in video distribution servers H04N21/2355) · CPC title

• H04L65/80 Primary

  Responding to QoS · CPC title