Adaptive Quality Control Scheme Based on VBR Characteristics to Improve QoE of UHD Streaming Service

Abstract

Recently, with the development of networks and smart devices, the demand for Ultra High Definition (UHD) video has risen, and HTTP adaptive streaming has attracted attention. HTTP adaptive streaming can guarantee high Quality of Experience (QoE) because it adaptively selects the video quality according to the network state. However, the existing quality control schemes experience unnecessary quality changes and low average video quality due to the bandwidth measurement and the quality control that do not consider the Variable Bit Rate (VBR) content characteristics of the UHD video. In this paper, we propose an adaptive quality control scheme based on VBR content characteristics to improve QoE of UHD streaming service. The proposed scheme measures the bandwidth using the actual bit rate of the segment and the difference in the network adaptability between segments. Furthermore, the proposed scheme defines a quality control region by considering the buffer state of the client. The quality control region consists of four subregions based on buffer thresholds, and the client selects the quality differently according to each subregion. Experimental results have shown that the proposed scheme improves the QoE compared to the existing schemes by minimizing the unnecessary quality changes and maximizing the average video quality.

Keywords

• adaptive control
• data transfer
• high definition video
• quality of service
• streaming media