Transcoding based optimum quality video streaming under limited bandwidth

Abstract

Bandwidth scarcity is a common problem faced in multimedia transmission over broadband wireless networks. From a consumer's perspective, the effectiveness of multimedia delivery suffers significantly in such networks. Further, in a mobile environment, when the number of users increases, they experience interruptions in the received multimedia streams. Adaptive streaming is one solution that can be adopted in any network environment regardless of the nature of the network. Adaptive streaming can be achieved using transcoding techniques. Transcoding is a mechanism that converts a video to a form that has less information so that the resulting data volume is appropriate for streaming over a low bandwidth network. However, the quality of the video stream drops due to transcoding. The advantage is that when there is a large number of users sharing the network, users could watch a video at a lower quality with no interruption if the transcoding is applied before the video is streamed to the end user. i.e., a compromise can be made between the video quality and network delay. The main focus of this research is to analyze the variation of transcoding parameters with respect to bandwidth, in order to achieve an adaptive streaming solution of optimum achievable quality in a low bandwidth broadband network.