Adaptive streaming of MPEG video over IP networks

The authors present the design of an adaptive service for streaming MPEG video over a best-effort IP network environment. The adaptive video streaming service exploits the inherent adaptiveness of video applications to perform controlled and graceful adjustments to the perceptual quality of the displayed MPEG video stream in response to fluctuations in the QoS delivered by the three primary components in the end-to-end path of a video stream, i.e., the video server, the network, and the receiver. The design supports multiple video adaptation techniques that can be applied individually or in combination to adapt the transmitted video stream in response to fluctuations in the QoS provided by the underlying system. A novel aspect of the design is a video adaptation algorithm that selects the adaptation delivering the best perceptual quality for the video playback for a given QoS delivered by the underlying infrastructure. They describe a prototype implementation of the adaptive video streaming service and present the results of a performance evaluation of this prototype system.