Method and Apparatus for Evaluating Media Delivery Quality

• US 20140298366A1
• Filed: 06/12/2014
• Published: 10/02/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Chen, Bing, Xie, Qingpeng, Zhang, Lei
• Granted Patent: US 9,774,910 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/14
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1069 Session establishment or de-establishment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1076 Screening of IP real time communications, e.g. spam over Internet telephony [SPIT]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2401 Monitoring of the client buffer
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2407 Monitoring of transmitted content, e.g. distribution time, number of downloads arrangements for monitoring programmes for broadcast or for distribution combined with broadcast H04H20/14
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/251 Learning process for intelligent management, e.g. learning user preferences for recommending movies details of learning user preferences for the retrieval of video data in a video database G06F16/739; computer systems using learning methods G06N3/08
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/442 Monitoring of processes or resources, e.g. detecting the failure of a recording device, monitoring the downstream bandwidth, the number of times a movie has been viewed, the storage space available from the internal hard disk arrangements for monitoring broadcast services or broadcast-related services H04H60/29; arrangements for identifying or recognising characteristics with a direct linkage to broadcast information H04H60/35; monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; monitoring in wireless networks H04W24/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6131 involving transmission via a mobile phone network wireless downlink channel access H04W74/006
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64738 Monitoring network characteristics, e.g. bandwidth, congestion level data switched network analysis H04L41/14; monitoring functioning in data switched networks H04L43/0817; flow control in packet networks H04L47/10

Abstract

A method and an apparatus are provided for evaluating media delivery quality that relate to the field of communications technologies and that can directly reflect a variation of media delivery quality and a variation of subjective experience of a user on media play quality. A method for evaluating media delivery quality includes: receiving media data, and measuring a data amount of the media data received within the period of time; parsing the media data, and acquiring a play rate of the media data; simulating, a decoding buffer in a process of playing the media data received within the period of time, to acquire a virtual decoding buffer and acquire a size of the virtual decoding buffer; and determining, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer, whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received within the period of time.

Claims

1. A method for evaluating media delivery quality, comprising:

receiving media data within a period of time;

measuring a data amount of the media data received within the period of time;

parsing the media data;

acquiring a play rate of the media data;

simulating, according to the data amount of the media data received within the period of time and the play rate of the media data, a decoding buffer in a process of playing the media data received within the period of time, to acquire a virtual decoding buffer and acquire a size of the virtual decoding buffer; and

determining, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer, whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received within the period of time.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein simulating, according to the data amount of the media data received within the period of time and the play rate of the media data, the decoding buffer in the process of playing the media data received within the period of time, to acquire the virtual decoding buffer and acquire the size of the virtual decoding buffer comprises:

acquiring, according to the data amount of the media data received within the period of time and the play rate of the media data, sustainable play time of the media data received within the period of time;

acquiring the size of the virtual decoding buffer within the period of time, which is a sum of the size of the virtual decoding buffer before the period of time and the sustainable play time of the media data received within the period of time when any moment within the period of time is within a buffer phase of media data playing; and

acquiring the size of the virtual decoding buffer within the period of time, which is a difference between the sum of the size of the virtual decoding buffer before the period of time and the sustainable play time of the media data received within the period of time and a duration of the period of time when any moment within the period of time is not within a buffer phase of media data playing.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein determining, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer, whether the pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received within the period of time specifically comprises:

determining that the media data is normally played within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer within the period of time is larger than zero; and

determining that the media data is played with a pause within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer within the period of time is smaller than or equal to zero.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein after determining, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer, whether the pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received within the period of time, the method further comprises acquiring a subjective experience score on the media data playing according to whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein acquiring the subjective experience score on the media data playing according to whether the pause occurs in the process of playing the media data comprises:

acquiring, according to a time when the pause occurs in the process of playing the media data, a duration of the pause in the process of playing the media data, a duration of an interval between two pauses in the process of playing the media data, and a duration of media data playing between the two pauses in the process of playing the media data; and

acquiring the subjective experience score on the media data playing at a moment according to a formula MOS=a₁×

Duration+a₂×

Interval+a₃×

PlayTime, wherein MOS is the subjective experience score, a₁, a₂, and a₃ are constants for calculating the subjective experience score, Duration is the duration of the pause in the process of playing the media data, Interval is the duration of the interval between two pauses that are before the moment and are closest to the moment in the process of playing the media data, and PlayTime is the duration of media data playing between the two pauses that are before the moment and are closest to the moment in the process of playing the media data.

6. The method according to claim 2, wherein measuring the data amount of the media data received within the period of time comprises measuring an average arrival duration per frame of the media data received within the period of time, wherein acquiring the play rate of the media data comprises acquiring a frame rate of the media data, and wherein after parsing the media data and acquiring the play rate of the media data, the method further comprises:

acquiring a theoretical duration per frame of the media data according to the frame rate of the media data;

acquiring, according to the average arrival duration per frame of the media data, a short pause jitter factor of the media data received within the period of time; and

acquiring, according to the subjective experience score of raw data of the media data received within the period of time before transmission and the short pause jitter factor of the media data received within the period of time, the subjective experience score of the media data received within the period of time.

7. The method according to claim 3, wherein measuring the data amount of the media data received within the period of time comprises:

detecting an acknowledgment number in an acknowledgment character packet fed back by a terminal within the period of time;

acquiring, by using the acknowledgment number, a data packet of the media data received and acknowledged by the terminal within the period of time; and

acquiring, according to the acknowledged data packet, the data amount of the media data received by the terminal within the period of time.

8. A method for evaluating media delivery quality of a radio cell, comprising:

measuring a data amount of media data received by each user in the radio cell within a period of time and a data amount of media data received by the radio cell within the period of time;

parsing the media data received by the radio cell;

acquiring a play rate of the media data and media data traffic required by the radio cell;

simulating, according to the data amount of the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time and the play rate of the media data, a decoding buffer in a process of playing the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time, to acquire a virtual decoding buffer of each user and acquire a size of the virtual decoding buffer of each user;

simulating, according to the data amount of the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time and the media traffic required by the radio cell, a decoding buffer in a process of playing the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time, to acquire a virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell and acquire a size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell;

determining, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer of each user, whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time;

determining, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell, whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time;

acquiring a subjective experience score of each user in the radio cell according to whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time;

acquiring a subjective experience score of a radio cell resource according to whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time;

acquiring a user satisfaction rate of the radio cell by using the subjective experience score of each user in the radio cell; and

evaluating media data delivery quality of the radio cell according to the subjective experience score of the radio cell resource and the user satisfaction rate of the radio cell.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein determining, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer of each user, whether the pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time comprises:

determining that the media data of the user is normally played within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the user within the period of time is larger than zero; and

determining that the media data of the user is played with a pause within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the user within the period of time is smaller than or equal to zero.

10. The method according to claim 8, wherein determining, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell, whether the pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time comprises:

determining that the media data of the radio cell is normally played within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell within the period of time is larger than zero; and

determining that the media data of the radio cell is played with a pause within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell within the period of time is smaller than or equal to zero.

11. The method according to claim 8, wherein acquiring the user satisfaction rate of the radio cell by using the subjective experience score of each user in the radio cell comprises:

separately comparing the subjective experience score of each user at the moment with the subjective experience score of each user before the moment; and

acquiring a user satisfaction rate of the radio cell at the moment by counting the number of users whose subjective experience is downgraded in the radio cell, wherein the user satisfaction rate of the radio cell at the moment is a difference between one and a quotient of the number of users in the radio cell whose subjective experience is downgraded divided by the total number of users in the radio cell.

12. An apparatus for evaluating media delivery quality, comprising:

a measurement unit configured to receive media data within a period of time and measure a data amount of the media data received within the period of time;

a parsing unit configured to parse the media data and acquire a play rate of the media data;

a calculation simulating unit configured to simulate, according to the data amount of the media data received within the period of time and the play rate of the media data, a decoding buffer in a process of playing the media data received within the period of time, to acquire a virtual decoding buffer and acquire a size of the virtual decoding buffer; and

a determining unit configured to determine, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer, whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received within the period of time.

13. The apparatus according to claim 12, wherein the calculation simulating unit comprises:

a play time calculating module configured to acquire, according to the data amount of the media data received within the period of time and the play rate of the media data, sustainable play time of the media data received within the period of time; and

a virtual decoding buffer calculating module configured to;

acquire the size of the virtual decoding buffer within the period of time, which is a sum of the size of the virtual decoding buffer before the period of time and the sustainable play time of the media data received within the period of time when any moment within the period of time is within a buffer phase of media data playing; and

acquire the size of the virtual decoding buffer within the period of time, which is a difference between the sum of the size of the virtual decoding buffer before the period of time and the sustainable play time of the media data received within the period of time and a duration of the period of time when any moment within the period of time is not within a buffer phase of media data playing.

14. The apparatus according to claim 13, wherein the determining unit is specifically configured to:

determine that the media data is normally played within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer within the period of time is larger than zero; and

determine that the media data is played with a pause within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer within the period of time is smaller than or equal to zero.

15. The apparatus according to claim 14, further comprising a first subjective experience score calculating unit configured to acquire a subjective experience score on the media data playing according to whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data.

16. The apparatus according to claim 13, wherein the measurement unit is further configured to measure an average arrival duration per frame of the media data received within the period of time, wherein the parsing unit is further configured to parse the media data and acquire a frame rate of the media data, and wherein the apparatus further comprises:

a theoretical duration per frame calculating unit configured to acquire, according to the frame rate of the media data, a theoretical duration per frame of the media data;

a short pause jitter factor calculating unit configured to acquire, according to the average arrival duration per frame of the media data, a short pause jitter factor of the media data received within the period of time; and

a second subjective experience score calculating unit configured to acquire, according to the subjective experience score of raw data of the media data received within the period of time before transmission and the short pause jitter factor of the media data received within the period of time, the subjective experience score of the media data received within the period of time.

17. An apparatus for evaluating media delivery quality of a radio cell, comprising:

a cell measurement unit configured to measure a data amount of media data received by each user in the radio cell within a period of time and a data amount of media data received by the radio cell within the period of time;

a cell parsing unit configured to parse the media data received by the radio cell, and acquire a play rate of the media data and media data traffic required by the radio cell;

a cell calculation simulating unit configured to simulate, according to the data amount of the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time and the play rate of the media data, a decoding buffer in a process of playing the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time, to acquire a virtual decoding buffer of each user and acquire a size of the virtual decoding buffer of each user, and simulate, according to the data amount of the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time and the media traffic required by the radio cell, a decoding buffer in a process of playing the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time, to acquire a virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell and acquire a size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell;

a cell determining unit configured to determine, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer of each user, whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time, and determine, according to the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell, whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time;

a cell subjective experience score calculating unit configured to acquire a subjective experience score of each user in the radio cell according to whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by each user in the radio cell within the period of time, and acquire a subjective experience score of a radio cell resource according to whether a pause occurs in the process of playing the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time;

a cell user satisfaction rate calculating unit configured to acquire a user satisfaction rate of the radio cell by using the subjective experience score of each user in the radio cell; and

a cell quality evaluating unit configured to evaluate media data delivery quality of the radio cell according to the subjective experience score of the radio cell resource and the user satisfaction rate of the radio cell.

18. The apparatus according to claim 17, wherein the cell calculation simulating unit comprises:

a user play time calculating module configured to acquire, according to the data amount of the media data received by each user within the period of time and the play rate of the media data, sustainable play time of the media data received by each user within the period of time; and

a user virtual decoding buffer calculating module configured to;

acquire the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the user within the period of time, which is a sum of the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the user before the period of time and the sustainable play time of the media data received by the user within the period of time when any moment within the period of time is within a buffer phase of media data playing; and

acquire the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the user within the period of time, which is a difference between the sum of the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the user before the period of time and the sustainable play time of the media data received by the user within the period of time and a duration of the period of time when any moment within the period of time is not within a buffer phase of media data playing.

19. The apparatus according to claim 17, wherein the cell calculation simulating unit comprises:

a cell play time calculating module configured to acquire, according to the data amount of the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time and the media data traffic required by the radio cell, sustainable play time of the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time; and

a cell virtual decoding buffer calculating module configured to;

acquire the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell within the period of time, which is a sum of the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell before the period of time and the sustainable play time of the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time when any moment within the period of time is within a buffer phase of media data playing; and

acquire the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell within the period of time, which is a difference between the sum of the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell before the period of time and the sustainable play time of the media data received by the radio cell within the period of time and a duration of the period of time when any moment within the period of time is not within a buffer phase of media data playing.

20. The apparatus according to claim 17, wherein the cell determining unit is specifically configured to:

determine that the media data of the user is normally played within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the user within the period of time is larger than zero;

determine that the media data of the user is played with a pause within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the user within the period of time is smaller than or equal to zero;

determine that the media data of the radio cell is normally played within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell within the period of time is larger than zero; and

determine that the media data of the radio cell is played with a pause within the period of time when the size of the virtual decoding buffer of the radio cell within the period of time is smaller than or equal to zero.