Video Latency Reduction via Predictive Pre-Buffering
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Solution Overview
Problem
Online digital video systems experience significant latency issues due to poor Internet connections, inefficient content retrieval, and improper digital video player functioning, leading to user frustration and reduced consumption.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method and system that predicts the likelihood of a user selecting digital video content, initiating a mediation process, unwrapping video tags, storing video content on the client device, stitching videos together, and initializing the video player before user selection, to reduce latency by preparing the content for immediate display.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If the system waits for user selection before retrieving and preparing video content, then network bandwidth and processing resources are conserved, but significant latency occurs causing user frustration
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by predicting which video content the user is likely to select and initiating retrieval, mediation, and player initialization processes before the actual user selection occurs. This proactive approach reduces video startup latency while maintaining resource efficiency by only preparing predicted content rather than all possible content.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses feedback mechanisms including user viewing history, current web page context, and behavioral patterns to continuously refine predictions about which video content the user will select. This feedback loop enables the system to optimize resource allocation by focusing preparation efforts on the most likely video selections.
2Speed
If the system retrieves and prepares video content immediately upon page load, then video playback starts faster, but network bandwidth and processing resources are wasted on content that may not be viewed
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary video content retrieval and preparation actions selectively based on prediction algorithms. Instead of retrieving all possible video content immediately, it identifies likely video selections through analysis of user behavior patterns and initiates preparation processes only for predicted content, thus improving speed without proportionally increasing resource consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically changes operational parameters such as video quality resolution, buffer size, and pre-fetch depth based on predicted user intent and current network conditions. This allows the system to optimize the balance between retrieval speed and resource consumption by adjusting preparation intensity according to prediction confidence levels.
3Measurement precision
If complex mediation processes and video tag unwrapping are performed synchronously, then content identification is accurate, but video startup latency increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs complex mediation processes, video tag unwrapping, and content identification operations in advance as preliminary actions before the user actually selects the video. By initiating these computationally intensive processes proactively based on prediction, the system maintains accurate content identification while reducing the perceived latency to near-zero when the user clicks play.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts the timing and depth of mediation processes based on prediction confidence and network conditions. When prediction confidence is high, the system performs more thorough mediation and unwrapping operations in advance. When confidence is lower or network conditions are poor, it performs lighter preliminary processing and completes remaining operations after user selection, thus balancing accuracy with latency reduction.
Data Source
AI summary
Examples of the systems and methods described herein relate to reducing latency issues associated with playing online digital video on client devices. An example method includes: determining that a client device of a user is displaying a web page; determining a likelihood that the user will select content on the web page associated with a digital video; and determining that the likelihood exceeds a threshold and, based thereon, performing at least one of the following steps before the user selects the content: initiating a mediation process to identify the digital video associated with the content; unwrapping a video tag associated with the digital video; storing at least a portion of the digital video on the client device; stitching the digital video together with a second digital video; and/or initializing a video player for displaying the digital video on the client device.