On the Impact of Layer-Splitting for Cloud-Based SVC Streaming

Abstract

Video streaming has dominated traffic usage over the Internet. With the development of heterogeneous mobile devices, various streaming environments with different display sizes and network bandwidths have accelerated video streaming to the masses. To accommodate the increasing demand for video, streaming providers have made efforts to build services based on scalable video coding (SVC) over the cloud infrastructure, which leverages elastic amounts of resources and network bandwidth on the fly. In this paper, we suggest a split-layer SVC-based streaming architecture optimized for a cloud environment. By separately controlling streaming instances with awareness of clients device ratio amongst smartphone, tablet, and PC, we improve resource utilization and save network bandwidth. We also evaluate how our proposed system can improve the total cost for providing a video streaming service on a cloud infrastructure. We carry out extensive experiments to evaluate the performance in multiple real-life scenarios by simulating streaming services on (1) a mobile-client-heavy channel, (2) a PC-client-heavy channel, and (3) a device-balanced channel.

Optimal Multi-Interface Selection for Mobile Video Streaming in Efficient Battery Consumption and Data Usage

“…In our previous work [11], we evaluated the extent to which split-layer streaming brings advantages to video service providers. The experimental results indicated that the split-layer streaming system brings better resource utilization and network bandwidth conservation compared to conventional SVC streaming.…”

“…Our prediction procedure is presented in Algorithm 1, Lines (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13). The video segment manager predicts the next average throughput using the EWMA algorithm, which is as follows:̂+…”

“…BL, EL1, and EL2 have average bitrates of 1142 Kbps, 1687 Kbps, and 2318 Kbps, respectively. Using our designed code [11], we split a multilayer bitstream by parsing the DID data in the NAL unit header and then stored the split bitstream in separate layers.…”

“…In our previous study [11], we proved the effectiveness of split-layer SVC video streaming in cloud environments for video-on-demand (VoD) service providers. Split-layer SVC streaming can effectively scale to manage the required channels on each layer (e.g., a base layer or enhancement layers) of various client connections.…”