Proactive Scrub Image Caching for Seamless Timeline Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing digital media receivers face challenges in providing timely and efficient display of scrub images during timeline scrubbing of digital media, as they often require lengthy fetching times due to network bandwidth limitations, leading to gaps in image availability when users rapidly navigate through media content.
Innovation Solution
The digital media receiver proactively fetches and caches multiple sets of scrub images from a network media server, with each successive set filling time gaps, ensuring that images are available for display in a scrub image window, even during rapid navigation, by using a pre-fetching process that continues until sufficient granularity and coverage are achieved.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the digital media receiver fetches scrub images from a network media server during playback, then the images can be displayed in the scrub image window, but network bandwidth limitations cause lengthy fetching times and gaps in image availability
Solution Approach 1:
The system proactively fetches and caches multiple sets of scrub images from the network media server before they are actually needed for display. This pre-fetching strategy ensures that images are already available in local memory when the user navigates to them, eliminating network latency during scrubbing operations and ensuring continuous image availability.
2Reliability
If the receiver caches multiple sets of scrub images proactively, then image availability is improved, but memory resources are consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The system optimizes memory resource allocation by caching scrub images with varying degrees of detail or completeness based on their likelihood of being accessed. Instead of uniformly caching all possible images, it prioritizes storing images that are more likely to be needed, thereby improving image availability while minimizing memory consumption.
3Loss of energy
If the receiver fetches scrub images on-demand during playback, then network bandwidth is conserved, but user experience degrades due to wait times during rapid navigation
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary fetching of scrub images during playback periods when the user is not actively scrubbing. This allows the system to conserve network bandwidth during critical scrubbing operations while still maintaining a cache of pre-fetched images that can be immediately displayed, thus preserving both network efficiency and navigation smoothness.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are systems, methods, devices and computer-readable media for image fetching for timeline scrubbing of digital media. In some implementations, a method comprises: receiving at a first time prior to receiving a scrub command, a first set of scrub images associated with digital media, the first set of scrub images having a first set of positions on a timeline of the digital media; receiving a first scrub command; receiving at a second time after the first time, a second set of scrub images associated with the digital media, the second set of scrub images having a second set of positions on the timeline that fill time gaps in the first set of positions on the timeline; animating, a timeline overlay including the timeline, a playhead and a scrub image window; and selecting a scrub image from the first or second sets of scrub images for presentation in the scrub image window.