Separate Metadata Track for Adaptive Streaming Quality Signaling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Adaptive streaming technologies face challenges in providing quality information to clients, leading to inefficient bandwidth usage and poor user experience due to the lack of metadata signaling in existing systems, which results in video data being dropped, fragmented, or delayed.
Innovation Solution
A system that uses a separate metadata track to provide quality information about media stream representations, allowing enhanced clients to make intelligent decisions on rate control and adaptation logic without modifying the manifest file or media segments, thereby improving streaming performance and user experience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If adaptive streaming technologies use traditional manifest files and media segments without metadata signaling, then the system structure remains simple and backwards compatible, but quality information is lost leading to inefficient bandwidth usage and poor user experience
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments metadata into separate tracks corresponding to different media representations, allowing quality information to be delivered independently from the manifest file and media segments. This segmentation preserves quality information while maintaining the existing simple system structure for clients that do not support metadata tracks.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces metadata tracks as an intermediary layer between the media server and the client, carrying quality information without modifying the existing manifest file or media segment structures. This intermediary approach enables enhanced clients to access quality information while maintaining backwards compatibility with traditional clients.
2Loss of energy
If clients lack quality information from metadata, then bandwidth consumption increases due to inefficient adaptation decisions, but adding metadata tracks increases system complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables enhanced clients to self-serve quality information through metadata tracks, allowing them to make intelligent adaptation decisions based on actual quality metrics. This reduces unnecessary bandwidth consumption by enabling clients to select appropriate representations based on quality information without increasing server-side complexity.
3Loss of information
If metadata is integrated into manifest files or media segments, then quality information is available to clients, but backwards compatibility is broken and system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent separates metadata into independent tracks that are distinct from manifest files and media segments. This segmentation allows enhanced clients to access quality information through metadata tracks while traditional clients continue to use the existing manifest file structure without any modifications, thereby maintaining backwards compatibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The metadata track structure is designed to be universal, serving both enhanced clients that can utilize quality information for intelligent adaptation and traditional clients that ignore the metadata tracks and use conventional manifest-based adaptation. This multi-functionality ensures backwards compatibility while enabling advanced features.
Data Source
AI summary
A method is provided in one example embodiment and includes receiving media from an input; gathering metadata from a plurality of media stream representations that are provided by the input; creating one or more metadata segments corresponding to the plurality of media stream representations in order to generate a metadata track; and making at least a portion of the metadata track available to a client device, where the portion of the metadata track is provided separate from a manifest file.