Adaptive bitrate streaming
[4] This results in providing very little buffering, faster start times and a good experience for both high-end and low-end connections.
An adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithm in the client performs the key function of deciding which bit rate segments to download, based on the current state of the network.
Post-production houses, content delivery networks and studios use adaptive bit rate technology in order to provide consumers with higher quality video using less manpower and fewer resources.
The creation of multiple video outputs, particularly for adaptive bit rate streaming, adds great value to consumers.
[9] If the technology is working properly, the end user or consumer's content should play back without interruption and potentially go unnoticed.
Adaptive bit rate over HTTP was created by the DVD Forum at the WG1 Special Streaming group in October 2002.
[dubious – discuss][citation needed] The technology was originally called DVDoverIP and was an integral effort of the DVD ENAV book.
[17] The concept came from storing MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 DVD TS Sectors into small 2KB files, which will be served using an HTTP server to the player.
The original XML schema provided a simple playlist of bit rates, languages and url servers.
The first working prototype was presented to the DVD Forum by Phoenix Technologies at the Harman Kardon Lab in Villingen Germany.
[citation needed] Adaptive bit rate streaming was introduced by Move Networks in 2006 [18] and is now being developed and utilized by Adobe Systems, Apple, Microsoft and Octoshape.
[25] As part of their collaboration with MPEG, 3GPP Release 10 has adopted DASH (with specific codecs and operating modes) for use over wireless networks.
Available implementations are the HTML5-based bitdash MPEG-DASH player[26] as well as the open source C++-based DASH client access library libdash of bitmovin GmbH,[15] the DASH tools of the Institute of Information Technology (ITEC) at Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt,[3][27] the multimedia framework of the GPAC group at Telecom ParisTech,[28] and the dash.js[29] player of the DASH-IF.
[34] This was officially accepted as RFC 8216 A number of proprietary and open source solutions exist for both the server implementation (segmenter) and the client player.
HTTP-based streaming also allows video fragments to be cached by browsers, proxies, and CDNs, drastically reducing the load on the source server.
[40] Microsoft is actively involved with 3GPP, MPEG and DECE organizations' efforts to standardize adaptive bit-rate HTTP streaming.
Microsoft has successfully demonstrated delivery of both live and on-demand 1080p HD video with Smooth Streaming to Silverlight clients.
In all of these approaches, the client state is modeled using, among others, information about the current perceived network throughput and buffer filling level.
Furthermore, it was shown that multi-agent Q-learning can be applied to improve QoE fairness among multiple adaptive streaming clients.
Some of the documented considerations are things such as additional storage and encoding costs, and challenges with maintaining quality globally.
[citation needed] With no single clearly defined or open standard for the digital rights management used in the above methods, there is no 100% compatible way of delivering restricted or time-sensitive content to any device or player.
Implementations using byte ranges such as Microsoft Smooth Streaming require a dedicated HTTP server such as IIS to respond to the requests for video asset chunks.
