VIDEO QUALITY TESTING BY ENCODING AGGREGATED CLIPS

• US 20110075727A1
• Filed: 12/07/2010
• Published: 03/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 07/27/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Van Vleck, Paul, Sullivan, Marc A., Kortum, Philip T.
• Granted Patent: US 9,167,241 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 375/240.02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 17/004 for digital television systems

Abstract

A method includes receiving a first video clip and a second video clip. The first video clip and the second video clip are variable-bit-rate (VBR)-encoded to form a VBR-encoded aggregated video content item. The VBR-encoding of the first video clip is based on an encoding complexity of the second video clip.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a first video clip of a first video content source and a second video clip of a second video content source; and

variable-bit-rate (VBR)-encoding the first video clip and the second video clip to form a VBR-encoded aggregated video content item, wherein the VBR-encoding of the first video clip is based on an encoding complexity of the second video clip.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising performing a video quality test using the VBR-encoded aggregated video content item.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein VBR-encoding the first video clip and the second video clip comprises performing a two-pass VBR-encoding of the aggregated video content item that combines the first video clip and the second video clip.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the VBR-encoded aggregated video content item comprises a plurality of individually-purchasable movies.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first video clip and the second video clip have a similar duration.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the similar duration is about three minutes.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first video clip is a commercial.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising transmitting the VBR-encoded aggregated video content item over a network to a network interface device.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising pre-encoding the first video clip and the second video clip.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein pre-encoding the first video clip and the second video clip comprises pre-allocating a specific amount of data corresponding to each of the first video clip and the second video clip prior to forming the VBR-encoded aggregated video content item.

11. An apparatus comprising:

a video quality test device operable to perform a video quality test of a variable bit rate (VBR)-encoded aggregated video content item, wherein the VBR-encoded aggregated video content item includes a plurality of clips from a plurality of video content items, and wherein an encoding of at least one clip of the plurality of clips is based on an encoding complexity of another clip of the plurality of clips.

12. The apparatus of claim 11, further comprising an encoder operable to VBR-encode the plurality of clips.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the encoder is operable to perform a two-pass VBR-encoding of the VBR-encoded aggregated video content item.

14. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the VBR-encoding of each of the plurality of clips is based on an encoding complexity of each clip relative to encoding complexities of others of the plurality of clips.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein the plurality of video content items comprises a plurality of individually-purchasable and downloadable content items.

16. The system of claim 11, wherein at least half of the clips have a similar duration.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the similar duration is less than three minutes.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein the video quality test device comprises a computer operable to rate characteristics of decoded video content.

19. An apparatus comprising:

a tangible computer-readable medium storing data corresponding to a variable bit rate (VBR)-encoded aggregated video content item, wherein the VBR-encoded aggregated video content item includes a plurality of video clips, and wherein an encoding of at least one clip of the plurality of video clips is based on an encoding complexity of another video clip of the plurality of video clips.

20. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the VBR-encoded aggregated video content item is a video program having a plurality of program segments and having at least one embedded commercial segment.