A Novel Segment Scheduling Method for Multi-View Video Using Progressive Download

Abstract

Progressive download for multi-view video delivery is one of promising techniques to provide immersive and interactive experiences to users. In conventional multi-view video systems, a user downloads videos of all viewpoints of one content to realize smooth view switching. However, it causes increase of video traffic, and thus low video quality within an available download rate. To download only a desired viewpoint is another approach for reduction on volume of video traffic. However, playback stalls occur after view switching. The stalls induce low user's satisfaction for applications. In this paper, we aim at two objectives: 1) to achieve reduction on video traffic and 2) to achieve reduction on the number of playback stalls. To this end, we propose a new multi-view video delivery scheme for progressive download. The main idea of the proposed scheme is that the user only downloads potential videos, which are potentially played back by the user, to realize both traffic reduction and smooth view switching. In addition, we propose two download scheduling algorithms to prevent playback stalls even in a low download rate. The first algorithm prevents stalls in frequent view switching cases while the other prevents stalls in gazing cases. Evaluations using Joint Multi-view Video Coding (JMVC) encoder and multi-view video sequences show that the proposed method reduces video traffic by 55.1% compared with a simulcast scheme. In addition, the proposed method decreases the number of playback stalls during video playback by 86.0% compared with a request and response scheme.