Server Side Solutions For Web-Based Video

Abstract

In contemporary video streaming systems based on HTTP protocol, video players at the client side are responsible for adjusting video quality to network conditions and user expectations. However, when multiple video clips are streamed simultaneously, an intricate application logic implemented in the video players overlays the TCP mechanism which is responsible for a balanced access to a shared network link. As a result, some video players may not obtain a fair share of network throughput and may be vulnerable to an unstable video bit-rate. Therefore, we propose to simplify the algorithms implemented in the video players, which are responsible for the adjustment of video quality and constrain their functionality only to sending feedback to a server about a state of the player buffer. The main logic of the system is shifted to the server, which is now responsible for bit-rate selection and prioritisation of the video streams transmitted to multiple clients. To verify our proposition, we performed several experiments in a laboratory environment which show that when the server cooperates with the clients, the video players experience fewer quality switches and the system achieves better fairness when allocating network throughput among the video players. However, this comes at the cost of worse utilisation of network bandwidth.