Navigation Graph for Tiled Media Streaming

Abstract

After the emergence of video streaming services, more creative and diverse multimedia content has become available, and now the capability of streaming 360-degree videos will open a new era of multimedia experiences. However, streaming these videos requires larger bandwidth and less latency than what is found in conventional video streaming systems. Rate adaptation of tiled videos and view prediction techniques are used to solve this problem. In this paper, we introduce the Navigation Graph, which models viewing behaviors in the temporal (segments) and the spatial (tiles) domains to perform the rate adaptation of tiled media associated with the view prediction. The Navigation Graph allows clients to perform view prediction more easily by sharing the viewing model in the same way in which media description information is shared in DASH. It is also useful for encoding the trajectory information in the media description file, which could also allow for more efficient navigation of 360-degree videos. This paper provides information about the creation of the Navigation Graph and its uses. The performance evaluation shows that the Navigation Graph based view prediction and rate adaptation outperform other existing tiled media streaming solutions. Navigation Graph is not limited to 360-degree video streaming applications, but it can also be applied to other tiled media streaming systems, such as volumetric media streaming for augmented reality applications.