Streaming of scalable h.264 videos over the Internet

To investigate the benefits of scalable codecs in the case of rate adaptation problem, a streaming system for scalable H.264 videos has been implemented. The system considers congestion level in the network and buffer status at the client during adaptation process. The rate adaptation algorithm is content adaptive. It selects an appropriate substream from the video file by taking into account the motion dynamics of video. The performance of the system has been tested under congestion-free and congestion scenarios. The performance results indicate that the system reacts to congestion properly and can be used for Internet video streaming where losses occur unpredictably.