Optimizing Video Encoding for Adaptive Streaming over HTTP

Adaptive streaming over Hyper-Text Transport protocol (HTTP) is the new trend in video delivery on the Internet and is expected to be supported by consumer electronic devices such as Blu-ray players and DVRs. Proprietary solutions have been around for a couple of years and standardization efforts are entering the final stage. In order to make this platform successful, optimized content preparation algorithms are needed. We propose a content-based segmentation process for adaptive streaming over HTTP. This solution offers a good balance between network delivery requirements and rate-distortion (RD) performance. Resulting video stream is tailored for better quality of experience (QoE) for the end user. Experiments confirm that our algorithm outperforms popular segmentation techniques and saves10% of bandwidth on average for the same objective quality levels. This saving is significant given the volume of traffic that video delivery generates every day on the Internet.