Quality-driven streaming
Quality-based optimizations of a delivery process of streaming content may be enabled. The optimization may take the form of quality-based switching. To enable quality-based switching in a streaming client, the client may have access to information about the quality of an encoded segment and/or sub-segment. Quality-related information may include any number of added quality metrics relating to an encoded segment and/or sub-segment of an encoded video stream. The addition of quality-related information may be accomplished by including the quality-related information in a manifest file, including the quality-related information in segment indices stored in a segment index file, and/or providing additional files with quality-related segment information and providing a link to the information from an MPD file. Upon receiving the quality-related information, the client may request and receive a stream that has a lower bitrate, thereby saving bandwidth while retaining quality of the streaming content.
1. A method performed by a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU), the method comprising:
receiving a manifest file comprising a description of a plurality of segments of media content, wherein each segment represents a time-based portion of the media content, and wherein the manifest file indicates a bitrate and an absolute quality level for each of the plurality of segments;
selecting a segment of the plurality of segments based on the bitrate and the absolute quality level associated with the segment of the media content;
sending a request for the segment of the media content; and
receiving the requested segment of the media content.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the absolute quality level comprises at least one of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM), video quality metric (VQM), visual information fidelity (VIF), J.341, or mean opinion score (MOS).
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manifest file comprises a media presentation description (MPD) file.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manifest file further comprises a description of a plurality of representations of the media content, and wherein each representation comprises at least one segment of the media content.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manifest file specifies the same time interval of the media content for each segment of the plurality of segments.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the segment is selected based on the segment having a lowest bitrate of the plurality of segments that have at least a threshold absolute quality level and that are defined by the manifest file to have the same time interval of the media content.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manifest file comprises a segment index file.
8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the segment index file comprises at least one of an MP4 file or an M4S file.
9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the segment index file comprises an ISOBMFF-based file container comprising at least one box, and wherein a segment quality parameter is included within the at least one box of the ISOBMFF-based file container.
10. The method of claim 1 , comprising:
receiving a presence of the absolute quality level via a flag in the manifest file.
11. A wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) comprising:
a processor configured to:
receive a manifest file comprising a description of a plurality of segments of media content, wherein each segment represents a time-based portion of the media content, and wherein the manifest file indicates a bitrate and an absolute quality level for each of the plurality of segments;
select a segment of the plurality of segments based on the bitrate and the absolute quality level associated with the segment of the media content;
send a request for the segment of the media content; and
receive the requested segment of the media content.
12. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the absolute quality level comprises at least one of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM), video quality metric (VQM), visual information fidelity (VIF), J.341, or mean opinion score (MOS).
13. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the manifest file comprises a media presentation description (MPD) file.
14. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the manifest file further comprises a description of a plurality of representations of the media content, and wherein each representation comprises at least one segment of the media content.
15. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the manifest file specifies the same time interval of the media content for each segment of the plurality of segments.
16. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the processor is configured to select the segment based on the segment having a lowest bitrate of the plurality of segments that have at least a threshold absolute quality level and that are defined by the manifest file to have the same time interval of the media content.
17. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the manifest file comprises a segment index file.
18. The WTRU of claim 17 , wherein the segment index file comprises at least one of an MP4 file or an M4S file.
19. The WTRU of claim 17 , wherein the segment index file comprises an ISOBMFF-based file container comprising at least one box, and wherein a segment quality parameter is included within the at least one box of the ISOBMFF-based file container.
20. The WTRU of claim 11 , wherein the processor is configured to receive a presence of the absolute quality level via a flag in the manifest file.