Storage Management for Adaptive Bitrate Video Segments
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cloud storage systems face high costs and complexity in managing Adaptive Bitrate Video (ABR) content segments due to increased delivery demands, requiring significant IOPS and network bandwidth, especially for content items like video recordings.
Innovation Solution
A storage system that uses a unique content identification scheme to distribute and store unique copies of content segments across storage devices, optimizing storage and management by ensuring segments are written sequentially and contiguously, reducing redundancy through 2-way replication and erasure coding.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If cloud storage systems store ABR content segments with traditional methods, then content availability is maintained, but storage costs and system complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments content into discrete blocks that can be independently stored and managed across multiple storage devices. Each block is assigned a unique identifier enabling granular tracking and retrieval, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining content availability through distributed storage of segmented data
Solution Approach 2:
The storage system implements a universal content identification scheme that works across different storage devices and content types. The unique content identifier system provides multi-functional capability for tracking, retrieving, and managing content segments across the entire storage infrastructure, simplifying operations while ensuring availability
2Productivity
If cloud storage systems handle high delivery demands for ABR content, then content accessibility is improved, but IOPS and network bandwidth requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-generates and stores multiple bitrate versions of content segments during ingestion, rather than transcoding on-demand. This preliminary action enables rapid content delivery at different quality levels without requiring intensive real-time processing, reducing IOPS and bandwidth consumption during high-demand delivery scenarios
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements Adaptive Bitrate Video segmentation where different portions of content are stored at different quality levels based on predicted delivery needs. High-motion segments are stored at higher bitrates while static segments use lower bitrates, optimizing delivery performance while reducing overall storage and transmission resource requirements
3Reliability
If cloud storage systems store redundant copies of content segments, then data reliability is improved, but storage costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements asymmetric replication where the degree of redundancy varies by content characteristics and access patterns. Frequently accessed content receives higher replication factors for reliability, while less accessed content uses minimal redundancy. This asymmetric approach maintains data reliability for critical content while optimizing overall storage capacity utilization
Data Source
AI summary
A computing device may receive a request to store a content segment(s). The request may include an estimated storage size. The computing device may determine a plurality of storage devices based on an estimated capacity of each of the storage devices to store the content segment(s). The computing device may cause each of the storage devices to allocate storage for the content segment(s). The allocated storage may be tracked and/or retrieved based on location metadata indicative of the allocated storage that may be stored at a cache and/or metadata repository.