Concurrent Viewership Counting via Beacon Streams
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current internet video streaming systems face challenges in accurately and efficiently reporting viewership data in real-time, leading to high latency and increased complexity for both viewers and content providers, especially when handling large volumes of concurrent requests.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that utilize beacon streams from video player instances to track view-start and view-end events, incrementing and decrementing viewership counters, and transmitting this data through a content distribution network (CDN) to provide accurate and concurrent viewership data, allowing for the aggregation and delivery of viewership data to both viewers and providers, thereby reducing latency and system complexity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If real-time viewership data reporting is implemented, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a CDN (Content Delivery Network) as an intermediary component to handle viewership data collection and processing. The CDN acts as a mediator between video player instances and content providers, centralizing the complexity of real-time data aggregation while keeping individual player instances simple. This resolves the contradiction by isolating measurement precision requirements in the CDN layer while maintaining simple player endpoints.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements self-service mechanisms where video player instances automatically generate and send beacon streams with viewership data to the CDN without requiring complex processing logic. The CDN automatically aggregates data from multiple sources and generates reports, eliminating the need for complex coordination between components. This reduces device complexity while maintaining measurement precision through automated data collection.
2Loss of time
If real-time viewership data transmission is implemented, then loss of time is reduced, but use of energy increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements periodic beacon stream transmissions from video player instances to the CDN, rather than continuous real-time data streaming. Viewership events are reported at periodic intervals (e.g., on-demand events triggered by specific actions), reducing the frequency of data transmissions. This periodic approach significantly reduces energy consumption while maintaining acceptable latency for real-time reporting by using event-driven updates.
3Productivity
If concurrent requests handling is increased, then productivity is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple data collection and processing functions into the CDN infrastructure. Instead of each video player instance or content provider independently handling concurrent requests, the CDN consolidates data aggregation, processing, and reporting functions. This merging approach enables the system to handle thousands of concurrent requests through the CDN's distributed architecture while keeping individual components simple, thus improving productivity without proportionally increasing device complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A method includes, at a first time: receiving, from a first viewer population, a first request for a first playback segment of a video; generating a first rendition segment corresponding to the first playback segment; transmitting the first rendition segment to the first viewer population; aggregating a first set of viewership data for the first playback segment; and generating a first viewership count based the first set of viewership data, the first viewership count corresponding to a viewership data filter. In addition, the method includes, at the second time: receiving a second request from the second viewer population for a second playback segment of the video; generating the second rendition segment corresponding to the first playback segment; modifying frames of the second rendition segment to include the first viewership count; and transmitting the second modified rendition segment to the second viewer population and the first viewership count.