OPSE: Online Per-Scene Encoding for Adaptive HTTP Live Streaming

 2022 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME)
Industry & Application Track

July 18-22, 2022 | Taipei, Taiwan

Conference Website

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Vignesh V Menon,  Hadi Amirpour, Christian Feldmann (Bitmovin, Austria), Mohammad Ghanbari, and Christian Timmerer
Christian Doppler Laboratory ATHENA, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

Abstract: In live streaming applications, typically a fixed set of bitrate-resolution pairs (known as a bitrate ladder) is used during the entire streaming session in order to avoid the additional latency to find scene transitions and optimized bitrate-resolution pairs for every video content. However, an optimized bitrate ladder per scene may result in (i) decreased storage or delivery costs or/and (ii) increased Quality of Experience (QoE). This paper introduces an Online Per-Scene Encoding (OPSE) scheme for adaptive HTTP live streaming applications. In this scheme, scene transitions and optimized bitrate-resolution pairs for every scene are predicted using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT)-energy-based low-complexity spatial and temporal features. Experimental results show that, on average, OPSE yields bitrate savings of up to 48.88% in certain scenes to maintain the same VMAF, compared to the reference HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) bitrate ladder without any noticeable additional latency in streaming.

 

The bitrate ladder prediction envisioned using OPSE

OPSE: Online Per-Scene Encoding for Adaptive HTTP Live Streaming from Alpen-Adria-Universität

Acknowledgments: The financial support of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs, the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development, and the Christian Doppler Research Association, is gratefully acknowledged. Christian Doppler Laboratory ATHENA: https://athena.itec.aau.at/.