Scene-Aware Variable Bitrate Content Delivery for Smooth Playback
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Solution Overview
Problem
Adaptive bitrate systems often cause negative impacts such as lost video frames, dropped audio, and misaligned audio and video during bitrate changes, especially during important scenes or scene transitions.
Innovation Solution
Content is tagged with content elements indicating encoding complexity, scene transitions, and other attributes, allowing for dynamic bitrate adjustments based on these elements to ensure smooth playback.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If adaptive bitrate systems adjust bitrate based on network conditions, then bandwidth efficiency is improved, but content quality is degraded during important scenes
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by differentiating content segments based on their importance. Important scenes are identified and tagged with higher priority, allowing the system to allocate higher bitrates specifically to these segments while using lower bitrates for less important portions. This resolves the contradiction by maintaining high content quality where needed while optimizing bandwidth efficiency overall.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the bitrate parameter dynamically based on content characteristics. By analyzing content attributes and importance levels, the system adjusts bitrate values to match scene requirements. This allows bandwidth efficiency to be improved in less critical segments while preserving content quality in important scenes through parameter adaptation.
2Loss of energy
If bitrate is reduced to optimize bandwidth usage, then bandwidth efficiency is improved, but playback reliability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different quality levels locally to different content segments. By identifying important scenes and assigning them higher priority, the system ensures reliable playback for critical content while allowing bandwidth optimization in non-critical segments. This resolves the contradiction between bandwidth efficiency and playback reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary analysis of content to identify important scenes before transmission. By pre-tagging and prioritizing critical segments, the system can proactively allocate sufficient bandwidth resources to ensure reliable playback of important content, preventing playback issues before they occur.
3Adaptability or versatility
If bitrate changes are made frequently to adapt to network conditions, then adaptability is improved, but content quality deteriorates due to frame loss and audio-video misalignment
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by protecting important scenes from bitrate changes. By tagging critical segments with higher priority, the system maintains stable bitrates during these portions even when network conditions fluctuate, preventing frame loss and audio-video misalignment. This resolves the contradiction by allowing network adaptability in non-critical segments while preserving content quality in important scenes.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary identification and tagging of important scenes before transmission. This advance preparation allows the playback system to recognize which segments require protection from bitrate changes, enabling smooth transitions in less important segments while maintaining stability in critical content.
Data Source
AI summary
Provided are methods and systems for providing variable bitrate content (e.g., video content, audio content, multimedia content, etc.). The content may comprise a plurality of portions (e.g., frames, segments, fragments, etc.). Each portion of the content may be tagged and/or associated with a content element. A content element may be associated with and/or indicate one or more of an encoding parameter associated with a respective portion of the content, attributes of the content (e.g., a scene transition, scene change, etc.) associated with the respective portion of the content, or additional content related items (e.g., one or more advertisements, etc.) associated with the respective portion of the content. The content element may be used to determine a bitrate to associate with the respective portion of the content. The content may be received/retrieved according to the determined bitrates.