Reducing QoE Loss and Data Wastage of Short-form Video Streaming with HTTP/3 Prioritization

Abstract

With the introduction of the novel HTTP/3 prioritization scheme, the video player can conveniently assign a different priority for every download of a video segment in order to allocate suitable bandwidths for them. This work applies such a mechanism to reduce the QoE loss and data wastage of mobile short-form video streaming. Specifically, the proposed method buffers the viewing video and prebuffers (i.e., buffer in advance) pending videos simultaneously with respect to an optimized threshold. Such a threshold is based on an optimization of minimizing the risk of QoE loss caused by playback stalls and the risk of data wastage caused by downloading never-watched content. In order to prevent the prebuffering process from deteriorating the bandwidth of the buffering process, the prebuffering process is assigned the lowest priority and the buffering process is assigned the highest priority. Through evaluation, the proposed method is proven to provide the least QoE loss, data wastage, and a very balanced trade-off between them. Moreover, the crucial role of HTTP/3 prioritization in preventing bandwidth drop and avoiding playback stalls is clearly shown.