Anti-Freeze: High-Quality Adaptive Live Streaming with Real-time Transcoder

Video streaming constitutes more than 80% of Internet traffic [1], and the demand continues to rise as interactive video applications like virtual conferencing/collaboration as well as augmented/mixed reality emerge. Such interactive video applications pose a challenge for real-time video transcoding and streaming. Transcoding is a computationally intense process and if not performed efficiently it can result in unwanted delays, which further limit the Quality-of-Service (QoS) delivered by the streaming protocol. In this thesis, we aim to address the real-time challenge and propose Antifreeze, a complete end-to-end solution for real-time transcoding and streaming. We propose a machine-learning solution to estimate the transcoding time and resource requirement, which is used to direct our real-time transcoder to transcode video segments at the rate matching their frame rate. We complete the Antifreeze design with a novel quality adaptation algorithm that not only considers visual quality and bandwidth dynamics, but also transcoding time and necessary computing resource allocation. Our results show that Antifreeze significantly reduces the playback stalls and substantially improves the visual quality in interactive video streaming sessions under various bandwidth profiles.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MSc)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Science

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Mehmuda, Asif Ali

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Wang, Mea
• Krishnamurthy, Diwakar

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Drew, Steve
• Zhao, Richard

• streaming
• transcoding
• HEVC
• containers

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/40598

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/115680