TY - JOUR
T1 - The rate variability-distortion (VD) curve of encoded video and its impact on statistical multiplexing
AU - Seeling, Patrick
AU - Reisslein, Martin
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received April 21, 2004; revised January 31, 2005. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation through Grant Career ANI-0133252 and Grant ANI-0136774. The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Arizona State University, Goldwater Center MC 5706, Tempe AZ 85287 USA (e-mail: patrick.seeling@asu.edu; reisslein@asu.edu). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBC.2005.851121
PY - 2005/12
Y1 - 2005/12
N2 - Encoded video is expected to contribute a significant portion of the load on future communication systems and networks, which often employ statistical multiplexing. In such systems, the number of video streams that can be supported depends both on the mean bit rate as well as bit rate variability of the video streams. At the same time, the utility (revenue) earned from video streaming depends both on the number of supported video streams as well as their quality level. In this paper we examine the interplay between video quality, traffic variability, and utility for open-loop encoded video. We introduce the rate variability-distortion (VD) curve which relates the bit rate variability to the quality level of an encoded video. We find that the VD curve generally exhibits a characteristic "hump" behavior of first increasing, peaking, and subsequently decreasing variability for increasing quality. We examine the impact of video content characteristics, encoding parameters, and traffic smoothing on the VD behavior. We describe a methodology for assessing (i) the set of the video streams that can be supported with a statistical quality of service requirement, and (ii) the utility earned from video streaming over a link. This methodology is based on the rate-distortion and rate variability-distortion characteristics of the videos. We find that the statistical multiplexing gain and the utility as a function of the video quality level typically exhibit a "hump" similar to the VD curve.
AB - Encoded video is expected to contribute a significant portion of the load on future communication systems and networks, which often employ statistical multiplexing. In such systems, the number of video streams that can be supported depends both on the mean bit rate as well as bit rate variability of the video streams. At the same time, the utility (revenue) earned from video streaming depends both on the number of supported video streams as well as their quality level. In this paper we examine the interplay between video quality, traffic variability, and utility for open-loop encoded video. We introduce the rate variability-distortion (VD) curve which relates the bit rate variability to the quality level of an encoded video. We find that the VD curve generally exhibits a characteristic "hump" behavior of first increasing, peaking, and subsequently decreasing variability for increasing quality. We examine the impact of video content characteristics, encoding parameters, and traffic smoothing on the VD behavior. We describe a methodology for assessing (i) the set of the video streams that can be supported with a statistical quality of service requirement, and (ii) the utility earned from video streaming over a link. This methodology is based on the rate-distortion and rate variability-distortion characteristics of the videos. We find that the statistical multiplexing gain and the utility as a function of the video quality level typically exhibit a "hump" similar to the VD curve.
KW - Network utility
KW - Statistical multiplexing
KW - Variable bit rate video
KW - Video content
KW - Video quality
KW - Video streaming
KW - Video traffic
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=29044444034&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TBC.2005.851121
DO - 10.1109/TBC.2005.851121
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:29044444034
VL - 51
SP - 473
EP - 491
JO - IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting
JF - IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting
SN - 0018-9316
IS - 4
ER -