Streaming Video Trick-Play Buffering for Low-Latency Seeking
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Solution Overview
Problem
The current streaming video technologies provide inadequate feedback during trick-play operations, such as fast forwarding or rewinding, and often require pausing to reload buffers, resulting in a less than satisfactory viewing experience.
Innovation Solution
Enhanced trick-play modes are implemented using a media guidance application that maintains a normal buffer window and a trick-play window, allowing for high-quality, low-latency playback by selectively buffering and playing frames outside the normal buffer window, optimizing frame selection based on streaming performance metrics.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If the client downloads thumbnails at low resolution for each ten second interval, then the feedback to the viewer during trick-play operations is provided, but the resolution and quality of the feedback is significantly reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the video stream into discrete frames that can be individually requested and buffered. This allows the system to provide frame-level feedback during trick-play operations rather than relying on low-resolution thumbnails, thereby improving both feedback availability and quality simultaneously.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a mechanism that pre-buffers frames at various positions in the video stream before they are needed during trick-play operations. This preliminary buffering of frames at different timestamps allows the system to provide high-quality feedback immediately when trick-play is initiated, without waiting to download and process low-resolution thumbnails.
2Reliability
If the client streams the entire contents of portions through which the viewer is fast forwarding, then the viewer can access the content, but the latency and time required to position the stream accurately is increased
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and buffers only specific frames at particular timestamps rather than streaming entire portions of video content. This extraction approach allows the system to provide random access to specific frames during trick-play operations without downloading the complete intervening content, significantly reducing positioning latency while maintaining content accessibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a buffer of frame copies at various positions in the video stream, allowing the player to jump between different time positions by simply switching between pre-buffered frame copies. This copying mechanism eliminates the need to stream entire portions of content during trick-play operations, thereby reducing latency while maintaining reliable content access.
3Ease of operation
If the client provides trick-play operation feedback using thumbnails, then the viewer can see what content is associated with timestamps, but the feedback is provided at significantly lower resolution than the video content
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies different quality levels to different parts of the system: high quality for the actual video content and high quality for the feedback frames, while using efficient buffering strategies. By buffering frames at various timestamps with their original quality and only downloading them when needed during trick-play operations, the system provides high-resolution feedback without compromising the overall system efficiency or requiring excessive bandwidth.
Data Source
AI summary
Enhanced trick-play modes for video content that is being streamed to a client from a server are described. In an embodiment, the enhanced trick-play modes are provided with relatively low latency and high quality using trick-play optimization techniques for a streaming environment, avoiding the need to stream the entire contents of the portions through which the viewer is fast forwarding. By employing sophisticated selection criteria of which parts of the content to download at what time, the quality of the playback experience is improved versus that which would conventionally be possible when using a simple sequential frame data download. The streaming client maintains a cache of nearby significant frames, such as nearby key frames, in forward and/or reverse directions of the current playback position, without having to download the entire portions of the video stream in which the significant frames reside. The trick-play modes utilize these frames.