Intelligent Prefetching and Buffering for Interactive Streaming of MPEG Videos

Abstract

Continuous delivery of media streams like video over IP networks so far is mainly handled by commercial approaches that deliver the stream forward-oriented in their own proprietary format. Though some existing streaming technologies are able to adapt to varying bandwidths, they do not provide smooth reactions to user interactions with the continuous stream. We have developed the MPEG-L/MRP strategy, an adaptive prefetching algorithm for the MPEG-1 video format in combination with an intelligent buffering technique that allows for smooth and quick reactions to user interactions with the stream. With L/MRP [12] an approach already has been presented to deliver and buffer homogeneous continuous data streams like Motion-JPEG with special focus on fast reaction to user interactions. In contrast, the MPEG-1 encoding with its different frame types and the dependencies between frames opens the door to a more �ne-grained adaptation of the continous stream. However, the complexity of MPEG-1 calls for comprehensive adaptation and special amendments of the L/MRP algorithm to make it an eÆcient preloading and buffering technique for MPEG-1 videos. With the realization of MPEG-L/MRP in the context of a multimedia presentation engine on top of a multimedia repository we have an efficient means to deliver continuous streams of interactive multimedia presentations over existing IP infrastructure trying to minimize interaction response time and optimize loading/reloading portions of a video stream.