Viswanathan Swaminathan
Abstract
It has been roughly 20 years since the beginning of video streaming over the Internet. Until very recently, video streaming experiences left much to be desired. Over the last few years, this has significantly improved making monetization of streaming, possible. Recently, there has been an explosion of commercial video delivery services over the Internet, sometimes referred to as over-the-top (OTT) delivery. All these services invariably use streaming technologies. Initially, streaming had all the promise, then for a long time, it was download and play, later progressive download for short content, and now it is streaming again. Did streaming win the download versus streaming contest? Did the best technology win? The improvement in streaming experience has been possible through a variety of new streaming technologies, some proprietary and others extensions to standard protocols. The primary delivery mechanism for entertainment video, both premium content like movies and user generated content (UGC), tends to be HTTP streaming. Is HTTP streaming the panacea for all problems? The goal of this article is to give an industry perspective of what fundamentally changed in video streaming that makes it commercially viable now. This article outlines how a blend of technology choices between download and streaming makes the current wave of ubiquitous streaming possible for entertainment video delivery. After identifying problems that still need to be solved, the article concludes with the lessons learnt from the video streaming evolution.
- HDS. 2011. Adobe HTTP dynamic streaming. http://www.adobe.com/products/hds-dynamic-streaming.html.Google Scholar
- Huang, T., Handigol, N., Heller, B., McKeown, N., and Johar, R. 2012. Confused, timid, and unstable: Picking a video streaming rate is hard. In Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC). 225--238. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kuschnig, R., Kofler, I., and Hellwagner, H. 2011. Evaluation of HTTP-based request-response streams for Internet video streaming. In Proceedings of the 2nd Annual ACM Conference on Multimedia System (MMSys). 200--204. Google ScholarDigital Library
- MPEG. 2012. ISO/IEC 23009-1:2012, Information technology—Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH)—Part 1: Media presentation description and segment formats.Google Scholar
- Muller, C., Lederer, S., and Timerer, C. 2012. An evaluation of dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP in vehicular environments. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Mobile Video Pages (MoVid). 37--42. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pantos, R. and May, W. 2013. Apple HTTP live streaming. http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-11.Google Scholar
- Parmar, H. and Thornburgh, M. 2012. Real-time transport messaging protocol (RTMP). http://www.adobe.com/devnet/rtmp.html.Google Scholar
- Sandvine. 2013. Sandvine Global Internet Phenomenon Report 2H 2012. http://www.sandvine.com/downloads/documents/Phenomena_2H_2012/Sandvine_Global_Internet_Phenomena_Report_2H_2012.pdf.Google Scholar
- Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R., and Jacobson, V. 2003. Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). RFC 3550 (Proposed Standard). http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3550.txt.Google Scholar
- Schulzrinne, H., Rao, A., and Lanphier, R. 1998. Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP). RFC 2326 (Proposed Standard). http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2326.txt. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Smooth. 2009. Microsoft Smooth Streaming. http://www.iis.net/community/files/media/smoothspecs/{MS-SMTH}.pdf.Google Scholar
- Swaminathan, V. and Wei, S. 2011. Low latency live video streaming using HTTP chunked encoding. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP). 1--6.Google Scholar
- Wang, B., Kurose, J., Shenoy, P., and Towsley, D. 2008. Multimedia streaming via TCP: An analytic performance study. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 4, 2, Article 16. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Are we in the middle of a video streaming revolution?
Recommendations
Two decades of internet video streaming: A retrospective view
Special Sections on the 20th Anniversary of ACM International Conference on Multimedia, Best Papers of ACM Multimedia 2012For over two decades, video streaming over the Internet has received a substantial amount of attention from both academia and industry. Starting from the design of transport protocols for streaming video, research interests have later shifted to the ...
Using DASH Assisting Network Elements for Optimizing Video Streaming Quality
MM '17: Proceedings of the 25th ACM international conference on MultimediaOn-demand video streaming is a popular application which accounts for a large share of today's Internet traffic. Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) is the major streaming technology used by large content providers. However, this technology ...
Optimizing QoE and Latency of Live Video Streaming Using Edge Computing and In-Network Intelligence
MMSys '21: Proceedings of the 12th ACM Multimedia Systems ConferenceLive video streaming traffic and related applications have experienced significant growth in recent years. More users have started generating and delivering live streams with high quality (e.g., 4K resolution) through popular online streaming platforms ...
Reviews
Mojtaba Hosseini
If you are wondering what basic technological advances are behind your ability to watch your favorite Apple live keynote address or your favorite TV channel on the Internet, look no further for the answer than this simple tutorial. When you see things from an industry perspective, you will quickly understand the basic requirements for how a successful streaming solution is delivered. The paper reveals the shortcomings of earlier solutions and shows why the current solution is both effective and commercially viable. This is not an academic paper with lots of technical details and in-depth analysis, nor is it trying to be. Instead it addresses an audience unfamiliar with basic video streaming technology and offers a glimpse into how popular streaming actually works. The authors include an overview of traditional streaming protocols such as real-time transport protocol (RTP), real-time streaming protocol (RTSP), and real-time messaging protocol (RTMP), and the concept of progressive download. They conclude with a discussion of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) streaming and how it is both commercially viable and technically sound. The only shortcoming of the work is its simplicity and lack of depth, which is understandable given its purpose as an introductory tutorial. With ample references to more in-depth resources and an easy-to-read-and-understand style, the paper allows the reader to pursue details at will. After reading this tutorial, you will know a little bit more about what's happening behind the scenes the next time you are watching late-breaking news on your computer! Online Computing Reviews Service
Access critical reviews of Computing literature here
Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.
Comments