A prioritized end-to-end video streaming scheme using MPEG-4 fine granularity scalability

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new client buffer management scheme to adaptively regulate and optimize the decoded video quality for video streaming applications. Our scheme packetizes and prioritizes the video bitstream of MPEG-4 Fine Granularity Scalability. We assign individual packet a priority factor according to its rate-distortion performance and the buffer is managed based on the received aggregate priority factor for each frame. Since the packetization process considers the priority, our algorithm can use such information to perform real-time packets/bits allocation at the client buffer. For a given available bandwidth and constrained processing power, we provide improved performance in terms of reduction of visual quality variation and enhancement of overall visual quality.