Variant streams for real-time or near real-time streaming to provide failover protection

• US 8,639,832 B2
• Filed: 08/21/2012
• Issued: 01/28/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/31/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Biderman, David, May, William Jr., Tseng, Alan, Pantos, Roger, Batson, James David
• Primary Examiner(s): Kim, Hee Soo
• Application Number:
  US13/591,103
• Publication Number:
  US 20130046861A1
• Time in Patent Office: 525 Days
• Field of Search: 709/217, 709/231
• US Class Current: 709/231
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234327 by decomposing into layers, e.g. base layer and one or more enhancement layers
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234363 by altering the spatial resolution, e.g. for clients with a lower screen resolution
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26258 for generating a list of items to be played back in a given order, e.g. playlist, or scheduling item distribution according to such list retrieval of multimedia data based on playlists G06F16/40
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4394 involving operations for analysing the audio stream, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in audio streams arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of audio in broadcast systems H04H60/58
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44004 involving video buffer management, e.g. video decoder buffer or video display buffer
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44016 involving splicing one content stream with another content stream, e.g. for substituting a video clip
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44209 Monitoring of downstream path of the transmission network originating from a server, e.g. bandwidth variations of a wireless network arrangements for maintenance or administration in data switching networks involving bandwidth and capacity management H04L41/0896
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

Methods and apparatuses provide real-time or near real-time streaming of content using transfer protocols such as an HTTP compliant protocol. In one embodiment, a method includes providing multiple redundant locations that provide media content to client devices using alternative streams. To implement failover protection, a first server device or first content distribution service creates a stream, or multiple alternate bandwidth streams and generates playlist file(s). A second server device or second content distribution service creates a parallel stream, or set of streams. A client attempts to download the playlist file(s) from a first uniform resource locator (URL) using a first stream associated with the first server device or the first content distribution service. If a client is unable to download the playlist file(s) from the first URL, the client attempts to switch to an alternate stream associated with another URL.

Claims

1. A machine implemented method comprising:

requesting data, with a client device, over a network using a transfer protocol;

receiving, in response to the requesting, a playlist comprising a plurality of tags and a plurality of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) indicating a first playlist file and a second playlist file, wherein one or more of the plurality of tags indicates a first URI associated with the first playlist file and specifying a first location for a stream of content and a second URI associated with the second playlist file and specifying a second location for the stream of content, wherein the second location is different from, but at least partially redundant of, the first location;

selecting, with the client device, the first playlist file or the second playlist file;

using the transfer protocol, requesting the selected first or second playlist file with the client device, wherein the requesting uses a URI from the playlist corresponding to the selected playlist file;

receiving, with the client device, the requested playlist file, the requested playlist file having URIs indicating segments of the stream of content and a plurality of tags having parameters related to playback of the segments of the stream of content, wherein the segments of the stream of content provide media for playback on the client device;

using the transfer protocol, requesting one or more of the segments in an order indicated by the requested playlist file;

receiving the one or more requested segments over the network using the transfer protocol.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

generating an audio and/or video output representing the stream of content by playing the segments with the client device in the order indicated by the playlist, and wherein selecting, with the client device, the first playlist file or the second playlist file comprises selecting the first playlist file having a lower associated bandwidth parameter.

3. The method as in claim 1 wherein the playlist is a variant playlist and wherein the variant playlist specifies the first playlist file by a URI addressed to the first location and the variant playlist specifies the second playlist file by a URI addressed to the second location.

4. The method as in claim 3 wherein the order of URIs in the variant playlists specifies the order in which the client device requests playlist files from redundant locations.

5. The method as in claim 4 wherein the transfer protocol is a non-streaming transfer protocol that is a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)-compliant protocol.

6. A non-transitory computer-readable medium programmed with processor-executable instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to perform a machine implemented method comprising:

requesting data, with a client device, over a network using a transfer protocol;

receiving, in response to the requesting, a playlist comprising a plurality of tags and a plurality of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) indicating a first playlist file and a second playlist file, wherein one or more of the plurality of tags indicates a first URI associated with the first playlist file and specifying a first location for a stream of content and a second URI associated with the second playlist file and specifying a second location for the stream of content, wherein the second location is different from, but at least partially redundant of, the first location;

selecting, with the client device, the first playlist file or the second playlist file;

using the transfer protocol, requesting the selected first or second playlist file with the client device, wherein the requesting uses a URI from the playlist corresponding to the selected playlist file;

receiving, with the client device, the requested playlist file, the requested playlist file having URIs indicating segments of the stream of content and a plurality of tags having parameters related to playback of the segments of the stream of content, wherein the segments of the stream of content provide media for playback on the client device;

using the transfer protocol, requesting one or more of the segments in an order indicated by the requested playlist file;

receiving the one or more requested segments over the network using the transfer protocol.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 6 further comprising:

generating an audio and/or video output representing the stream of content by playing the segments with the client device in the order indicated by the playlist, and wherein selecting, with the client device, the first playlist file or the second playlist file comprises selecting the first playlist file having a lower associated bandwidth parameter.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 6 wherein the playlist is a variant playlist and wherein the variant playlist specifies the first playlist file by a URI addressed to the first location and the variant playlist specifies the second playlist file by a URI addressed to the second location.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 wherein the order of URIs in the variant playlists specifies the order in which the client device requests playlist files from redundant locations.

10. The computer-readable medium claim 9 wherein the transfer protocol is a non-streaming transfer protocol that is a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)-compliant protocol.

11. A system comprising:

a processing system programmed with executable instructions that, when executed, perform a machine implemented method comprising;

requesting data, with a client device, over a network using a transfer protocol;

receiving, in response to the requesting, a playlist comprising a plurality of tags and a plurality of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) indicating a first playlist file and a second playlist file, wherein one or more of the plurality of tags indicates a first URI associated with the first playlist file and specifying a first location for a stream of content and a second URI associated with the second playlist file and specifying a second location for the stream of content, wherein the second location is different from, but at least partially redundant of, the first location;

selecting, with the client device, the first playlist file or the second playlist file;

using the transfer protocol, requesting the selected first or second playlist file with the client device, wherein the requesting uses a URI from the playlist corresponding to the selected playlist file;

receiving, with the client device, the requested playlist file, the requested playlist file having URIs indicating segments of the stream of content and a plurality of tags having parameters related to playback of the segments of the stream of content, wherein the segments of the stream of content provide media for playback on the client device;

using the transfer protocol, requesting one or more of the segments in an order indicated by the requested playlist file;

receiving the one or more requested segments over the network using the transfer protocol.

12. The system of claim 11 further comprising:

generating an audio and/or video output representing the stream of content by playing the segments with the client device in the order indicated by the playlist, and wherein selecting, with the client device, the first playlist file or the second playlist file comprises selecting the first playlist file having a lower associated bandwidth parameter.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the playlist is a variant playlist and wherein the variant playlist specifies the first playlist file by a URI addressed to the first location and the variant playlist specifies the second playlist file by a URI addressed to the second location.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the order of URIs in the variant playlists specifies the order in which the client device requests playlist files from redundant locations.

15. The system as in claim 14 wherein the transfer protocol is a non-streaming transfer protocol that is a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)-compliant protocol.

16. A non-transitory computer-readable medium programmed with processor-executable instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to perform a machine implemented method comprising:

receiving, at a server device, a request for a variant playlist, the request being received from a network;

transmitting, in response to the receiving, the variant playlist over the network using a transfer protocol that is an HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) compliant protocol, wherein the variant playlist comprises a plurality of tags and a plurality of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) indicating a first playlist file and a second playlist file, wherein one or more of the plurality of tags indicates a first URI associated with the first playlist file and specifying a first location for a stream of content and a second URI associated with the second playlist file and specifying a second location for the stream of content, wherein the second location is different from, but at least partially redundant of, the first location, and wherein an order of URIs in the variant playlist specifies the order in which a client device requests playlists from redundant locations;

receiving at the server device a request of the first playlist file from the client device, the requesting coming over the network through the transfer protocol;

transmitting, from the server device, the first playlist file to the client device over the network through the transfer protocol, the first playlist file having URIs indicating segments of the stream of content and a plurality of tags having parameters related to playback of the segments of the stream of content.

17. The method as in claim 16, the method further comprising:

receiving, at the server device, a URI in the first playlist from the client device, the URI specifying at least a portion of the content, the URI being received over the network through the transfer protocol;

transmitting, in response to receiving the URI in the first playlist, the at least a portion of the content, the transmitting being performed over the network through the transfer protocol.

18. The method as in claim 16 wherein the second location is at least partially redundant of the first location for a set of bandwidth and encoding parameters.