Parallel GOP Video Encoding to Reduce Latency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional multiple bitrate (MBR) video encoding techniques are computationally intensive and do not efficiently utilize available processing resources, especially when dealing with high-resolution videos, leading to significant encoding time and resource consumption.
Innovation Solution
A video encoding management tool organizes pictures into groups of pictures (GOPs) and enables parallel encoding across multiple processing units by disabling motion estimation dependencies between GOPs, allowing each GOP to be encoded independently, and adjusts the number of GOPs encoded in parallel to balance latency and processing unit utilization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If conventional MBR video encoding is used, then encoding quality is maintained, but encoding time and computational resource consumption increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the video stream into multiple Groups of Pictures (GOPs), where each GOP is encoded independently. This segmentation allows parallel processing of different GOPs across multiple encoding devices, significantly reducing total encoding time while maintaining quality. Each GOP can be processed simultaneously without waiting for previous GOPs to complete.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a temporal dimension to parallel processing by encoding multiple GOPs at different times simultaneously. Instead of sequential encoding, the system encodes GOPs in parallel across time, utilizing multiple encoding devices to process different temporal segments concurrently, thereby reducing overall encoding duration.
2Productivity
If multiple GOPs are encoded in parallel, then encoding time is reduced, but dependencies between GOPs must be managed
Solution Approach 1:
By dividing the video into independent GOPs, the system eliminates inter-GOP dependencies that would otherwise complicate parallel processing. Each GOP is encoded as an independent unit, allowing simple distribution to multiple encoding devices without complex coordination or dependency management.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary organization of video frames into GOPs before encoding begins. This preliminary segmentation establishes clear boundaries and independence between encoding units, enabling straightforward parallel processing without runtime dependency resolution.
3Manufacturing precision
If high-resolution video is encoded, then output quality is improved, but computational resource consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments high-resolution video encoding into multiple independent GOPs that can be processed in parallel. This allows the system to distribute computational load across multiple encoding devices, maintaining high output quality while reducing the computational burden on any single device through workload partitioning.
Data Source
AI summary
A multiple bitrate (MBR) video encoding management tool utilizes available processing units for parallel MBR video encoding. Instead of focusing only on multi-threading of encoding tasks for a single picture or group of pictures (GOP), the management tool parallelizes the encoding of multiple GOPs between different processing units and/or different computing systems. With this parallel MBR video encoding architecture, different GOPs can be encoded in parallel. To facilitate such parallel encoding, data dependencies between GOPs are removed. The management tool can adjust the number of GOPs to encode in parallel on a computing system so as to favor parallelism of encoding for different GOPs at the expense of parallelism of encoding inside a GOP, or vice versa, and thereby set a suitable balance between encoding latency and throughput.