Underflow Prevention for AV Streaming Media Under Varying Channel Conditions

摘要

We propose a method to prevent receiver buffer underflow for AV streaming media under varying channel conditions using a variable scale factor adaptive media playout algorithm. Our proposed algorithm dynamically calculates a slow or a fast playout factor based on the current buffer state, target buffer level, past history of media data reception, estimate of future data arrival, content characteristics and the estimated current network conditions. As a result our algorithm results in prevention of underflow in situations where prior art approach can still result in underflow. Our algorithm can also avoid oscillations between slow and fast playout. Also variants of our algorithm can result in more smooth transition to normal playout from adaptive playout stage thus improving the perceptual user experience. The proposed algorithm can also be used to reduce initial buffering latency at the start of a media stream playback while achieving same robustness by reaching the desired target buffer level. We present a number of network simulation results for our proposed approach.