Look ahead to improve QoE in DASH streaming
January 1, 2020·
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0 min read
Román Belda
Ismael de Fez
Pau Arce
Juan Carlos Guerri
Abstract
When a video is encoded with constant quality, the resulting bitstream will have variable bitrate due to the inherent nature of the encoding process. This paper proposes an Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (ABR) algorithm, called Look Ahead, which takes into account this variability in order to calculate, in real time, the appropriate quality level that minimizes the number of interruptions during playback. The algorithm is based on Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) standard for on-demand services. It has been implemented and integrated into ExoPlayer v2, the latest library developed by Google to play DASH contents. The proposed algorithm is compared with Müller and Segment Aware Rate Adaptation (SARA) algorithms as well as the default ABR algorithm of ExoPlayer, using the most relevant QoE parameters: number of stalls, average quality, and representation switches. This paper also proposes two new QoE models for evaluating ABR algorithms, one based on VMAF (Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion) developed by Netflix. Results show that Look Ahead outperforms the compared algorithms in terms of stalls while hardly decreasing video quality, and that the proposed models are more accurate than similar existing ones.
Type
Publication
Multimedia Tools and Applications, 79(33–34), 25143–25170. Springer
Authors
Associate Professor at Universitat Politècnica de València
Román Belda received his degree in Computer Science in 2004 and an M.S. in Telematics in 2013 from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain. He obtained his Ph.D. in Telecommunications from UPV in 2021. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València and a member of the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM). His research interests include adaptive video streaming (MPEG-DASH), low-latency and peer-assisted video delivery, Quality of Experience (QoE), mobile applications and multimedia transmission protocols.
Authors
Master’s Programme Director at Valencian International University (VIU)
Ismael de Fez was born in Valencia, Spain in 1983. He received his Telecommunications Engineering degree in 2007 and his M.S. in Telematics in 2010 from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), where his M.Sc. thesis was awarded by the Telefónica chair of UPV. He obtained his PhD in Telecommunications from UPV in 2014 and an MBA from UPV in 2017. He worked as an R&D Engineer at the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM, UPV) from 2008 to 2021. Since 2021 he has been Director of the Master’s in Development of Web Applications and Services at the Valencian International University (VIU). His research interests include multimedia transmission, DASH adaptive streaming, QoE modelling, AL-FEC coding for unidirectional wireless environments, and file encoding.
Authors
Associate Professor at Universitat Politècnica de València
Pau Arce Vila received his Telecommunications Engineering degree in 2005, his M.S. in Communication Technologies, Systems and Networks in 2008, and his PhD in Telecommunications in 2014, all from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain. He is a Profesor Permanente Laboral in the Communications Department at UPV and a researcher at the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM) since 2005. His research interests include multimedia QoS, adaptive video streaming (DASH), quality of experience, routing in wireless ad hoc networks, and performance evaluation of multimedia systems.
Authors
Full Professor at Universitat Politècnica de València
Juan Carlos Guerri Cebollada was born in Valencia, Spain in 1969. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) in 1993 and 1997, respectively. He is a Full Professor in the Department of Communications Engineering at UPV, where he teaches at the ETSI Telecomunicación. He leads the Multimedia Communications research group (COMM) of the iTEAM (Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications). His research spans multimedia communications, adaptive video streaming (DASH), quality of experience, wireless and ad hoc networks, and the application of multimedia technologies to industry, medicine, education and communications.