Server-Side Video Stream Indexing for Seamless Live Rewind
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional video streaming systems face challenges in providing seamless rewind and playback of live video streams due to high client-side computing resource requirements and lack of scalability, leading to processing delays and degraded user experience, especially when handling large numbers of concurrent viewers.
Innovation Solution
A server-side support system is implemented using a streaming data center with a data center dispatcher, shared index database, and multiple streaming data centers, which handles video stream indexing and archiving, allowing for efficient rewind and playback by retrieving data packets from stored archives based on user requests and load balancing across multiple servers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If client-side support for rewinding video streams is implemented, then users can rewind and playback live video streams, but it requires large amounts of client-side computing resources (CPU, memory, disk space) and causes processing delays
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the rewind functionality from the client-side video player and relocates it to the server-side streaming system. The server maintains an archive of the live video stream and handles rewind requests by retrieving data packets from the server-side archive, thereby removing the computational burden of rewind operations from client devices.
Solution Approach 2:
The server performs preliminary actions by continuously archiving the live video stream data packets as they are received and processed. This pre-archiving allows the server to quickly retrieve and deliver historical video data for rewind operations without requiring real-time processing on client devices.
2Ease of operation
If client-side buffering is used for rewind support, then local video playback is enabled, but it requires adequate memory and disk space on client machines
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the video archive storage function from client devices and relocates it to the server. The server maintains the complete archive of the live stream, allowing clients to request and receive specific portions of the stream for playback without storing large amounts of data locally.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of requiring clients to store and manage complete video archives, the system creates and manages copies on the server side. Clients receive only the specific data packets they need for playback, which are copied from the server's archive rather than being stored permanently on client devices.
3Productivity
If multiple streaming servers are used to handle large numbers of concurrent viewers, then system capacity increases, but archiving and retrieving across multiple sub-systems becomes complex and less scalable
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the archiving function into the server-side streaming infrastructure itself. Multiple streaming servers share a common archiving mechanism, allowing them to collectively serve large numbers of concurrent viewers while maintaining simplified data retrieval paths through coordinated server-side archive management.
Data Source
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AI summary
A system and method provide server side support for seamless, scalable rewind and playback of a video stream. A video stream is stored and indexed in a network storage place. A video stream can be indexed at frame level where each intra frame of the video stream has an index indicating the file offset and the time stamp of the intra frame in the video stream. A user request for rewinding of a video stream while the video stream is being broadcast is processed by extracting the rewinding time requirement from the user request. The extracted rewinding time value is used to calculate the requested file offset. The video stream starting at the requested time is retrieved and played back according to the user request. The system also provides server side support for seamless rewinding of a video stream and scalable system performance across multiple streaming data centers.