Client Side Control of Adaptive Streaming

• US 20130346590A1
• Filed: 06/21/2012
• Published: 12/26/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Cucu, Andrian, Scurtu, Tudor, Vergoti, Silviu, Alexandru, Mihai
• Granted Patent: US 9,819,715 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/762 at the source reformatting of additional data in video distribution servers H04N21/2355
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS

Abstract

One embodiment includes implementing adaptive streaming by a switch manager application executed at a client device. The switch manager application can determine a respective weight for a plurality of switching rules. Each switching rule can include one or more criteria for generating a recommended quality level. Each weight can include data describing a reliability of the rule. The switch manager application can select, based at least partially on the respective weight of the at least one switching rule, at least one switching rule of the plurality of switching rules to generate a recommendation. Another embodiment includes the switch manager application generating a recommendation including a quality level and a confidence level from each of the plurality of switching rules. The switch manager application can determine a selected quality level based on the weights of the switching rules and the quality levels and confidence levels of the recommendations.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining, by a switch manager application executed by a processing device, a respective weight for each of a plurality of switching rules, each switching rule comprising one or more criteria used to generate a recommended quality level for electronic content, each weight describing a reliability of the respective switching rule; and

selecting, by the switch manager application, at least one switching rule of the plurality of switching rules to generate a recommendation, wherein the selection of the at least one switching rule is based at least partially on the respective weight of the at least one switching rule.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, by the switch manager application executed by the processing device, a respective confidence level for a respective recommendation generated by each of the plurality of switching rules, wherein the respective confidence level describes an availability of quality-of-service data used by the respective switching rule,

wherein the selection of the at least one switching rule is based at least partially on the respective confidence level of the at least one switching rule, and

wherein the respective confidence level further comprises a user experience quality deduced from the quality-of-service data.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein determining the respective weight for each of the plurality of switching rules comprises analyzing a history of recommended quality levels generated using the respective switching rule.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein analyzing the history of recommended quality levels comprises determining whether the history of recommended quality levels includes a number of emergency down-switches exceeding a pre-determined threshold.

5. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

for each of the plurality of switching rules, generating, by the switch manager application, the respective recommendation comprising the recommended quality level and the respective confidence level; and

determining, by the switch manager application, a selected quality level based on the respective weights of the plurality of switching rules and the respective recommended quality levels and respective confidence levels of the recommendations.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising retrieving, by a viewer application executed by the processing device, one of a plurality of renditions from a content provider, wherein the retrieved rendition has a quality level less than or equal to the selected quality level, wherein the plurality of renditions comprises a plurality of copies of an asset, each copy of the asset being encoded at a different quality level.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein a respective quality level for a respective rendition corresponds to the respective rendition being encoded using a respective bit rate.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising,

accessing, by the switch manager application, a subset of the plurality of switching rules, the subset comprising one or more emergency switching rules;

and

for each of the one or more emergency switching rules, generating, by the switch manager application, an emergency recommendation comprising a respective emergency quality level and an emergency confidence level; and

determining, by the switch manager application, whether at least one emergency confidence level exceeds a threshold confidence level and at least one of;

determining the respective weights of plurality of switching rules and selecting the at least one switching rule based on none of the emergency confidence levels exceeding the threshold confidence level;

or

determining a selected quality level corresponding to the emergency recommendation associated with a lowest bit rate and having the emergency confidence level exceeding the threshold confidence level.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the respective weight for each of the plurality of switching rules is determined based on at least one of an actual bit rate metric, a bandwidth metric, a buffer fragments metric, and a dropped-frames-per-second (“

DFPS”

) metric.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of switching rules comprises at least one of:

a bandwidth rule describing a bandwidth of a network connection between a client device including the processing device and a content provider providing the electronic content;

a bandwidth buffer rule describing the bandwidth of the network connection and a minimum amount of electronic content stored in a buffer that is accessible by the client device;

a hardware capabilities rule describing one or more of a battery life, memory capacity, or processing power of the client device;

a content utilization rule describing how the electronic content is being rendered for display or use at the client device; and

a buffering rule describing whether one or more renditions have historically caused depletion of the buffer.

11. A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying program code executable by a processing device, the non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising:

program code for determining a respective weight for each of a plurality of switching rules, each switching rule comprising one or more criteria used to generate a recommended quality level for electronic content, each weight describing a reliability of the respective switching rule; and

program code for selecting at least one switching rule of the plurality of switching rules to generate a recommendation, wherein the selection of the at least one switching rule is based at least partially on the respective weight of the at least one switching rule.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 11, further comprising

program code for generating, based on at least partially on the at least one switching rule, the recommendation comprising a recommended quality level;

and

program code for generating a selected quality level having a bit rate less than or equal to a recommended bit rate corresponding to the recommended quality level.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the at least one switching rule comprises a dropped-frames-per-second (“

DFPS”

) rule and wherein the program code for generating the recommendation comprises program code for determining that a rendition of electronic being rendered is associated with a number of dropped frames exceeding a threshold number of dropped frames.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the at least one switching rule comprises a buffering rule and wherein the program code for generating the recommendation comprises program code for determining whether one or more renditions of the electronic content rendered for display at a client device have historically caused depletion of a buffer that is accessible by the client device.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the at least one switching rule comprises a bandwidth buffer rule and wherein the program code for generating the recommendation comprises program code for determining a bandwidth of a network connection between a client device and a server providing the electronic content and a minimum amount of electronic content stored in a buffer that is accessible by the client device.

16. A client computing device comprising:

a processor configured to execute instructions stored in a non-transitory computer-readable medium providing a switch manager application;

wherein the switch manager application comprises one or more modules configured to perform operations comprising;

determining a respective weight for each of a plurality of switching rules, each switching rule comprising one or more criteria used to generate a recommended quality level for electronic content, each weight describing a reliability of the respective switching rule; and

selecting at least one switching rule of the plurality of switching rules to generate a recommendation, wherein the selection of the at least one switching rule is based at least partially on the respective weight of the at least one switching rule.

17. The client computing device of claim 16, wherein the switch manager application is configured to perform additional operations comprising:

determining a respective confidence level for a respective recommendation generated by each of the plurality of switching rules, wherein the respective confidence level describes an availability of quality-of-service data used by the respective switching rule,

wherein the selection of the at least one switching rule is based at least partially on the respective confidence level of the at least one switching rule, and

wherein the respective confidence level further comprises a user experience quality deduced from the quality-of-service data.

18. The client computing device of claim 17, wherein the processor is configured to execute additional instructions stored in the non-transitory computer-readable medium providing a viewer application, wherein the viewer application comprises one or more modules configured to perform operations comprising:

rendering for display a rendition of electronic content having a respective quality level;

analyzing data associated with rendering the rendition to generate the quality-of-service data.

19. The client computing device of claim 16, further comprising a display device configurable by the processor to display the electronic content and wherein the at least one of the plurality of switching rules comprises a content utilization rule describing whether the electronic content is being rendered for full-screen display at the display device.

20. The client computing device of claim 16, further comprising a display device configurable by the processor to display the electronic content and wherein the at least one of the plurality of switching rules comprises a content utilization rule describing one or more characteristics of the display device.