Sunday, January 15, 2017

Researchers Study Improvements in Video Streaming - Science

While the article has one of the worst we have seen yet for SD, the content is something of interest to practically everyone in getting better video on a computer or a handheld without spending a ton of money for it.  (Science Daily:  The importance of beating buffering)

How do you like that title, huh?


Streaming video over mobile networks could be greatly improved by smart prioritization of visually important data.

By prioritizing the delivery of rich visual data, A*STAR researchers have demonstrated that the quality of streaming video can be vastly improved on even the most crowded wireless networks.

- SD


We see what they hope to do and here's a bit on the way they will do it.

There are already methods for guaranteeing a certain transmission rate to maintain the quality of streaming video and audio. Known as Quality of Service (QoS) protocols, these methods work well in many cases, but generally require a large allocation of bandwidth to each user, which might not be available on crowded mobile networks.  Peng Hui Tan, Maodong Li and colleagues from the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research instead studied how it might be possible to rate the importance of discrete video 'packets' to reduce the bandwidth needed to maintain a certain Quality of Experience, or QoE.

- SD

Most of us have lots of bandwidth but network congestion still causes troubles but they have an idea for a better QoE.  That's the first time I ever saw that little QoE code.  How twee.


The researchers had success in their lab environment in gaining the improvements they had hoped.

By prioritizing video packets -- each a fraction of an individual frame of video -- based on bit rate and other network parameters, then inserting this priority in the QoS scheme in real time, the team was able to achieve a significant enhancement in the perceived quality of streaming video among multiple users in a laboratory environment with limited wireless bandwidth.

- SD

Who knows how that expands when it comes to the actual process but they achieved the result and really it's through better husbandry of resources.  Not bad at all.


That title still cracks me right up.  The researchers probably didn't write that but rather it came from SD editors so well done, mates (larfs).

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