Exploiting Video Quality Information in Rate Adaptation for HTTP-Based Video Streaming

Abstract

This paper explores how video quality information can be exploited by HTTP-based adaptive streaming (HAS) clients in their rate adaptation schemes. We first present an idealized combinatorial optimization formulation of the quality-aware rate adaptation problem and its corresponding solution. A few design principles are then introduced to arrive at a practical and robust rate adaptation scheme in the presence of real-world uncertainties (e.g., inaccuracy in bandwidth estimation, unforeseen changes in future video contents). Results from testbed-based experiments verify that by exploiting video quality information, our proposed quality-aware rate adaptation scheme significantly outperforms conventional rate-based clients in various contention-free and multi-client contention scenarios.