Encoder output responsive to quality metric information

• US 10,630,990 B1
• Filed: 05/01/2018
• Issued: 04/21/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 05/01/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Saxton, John Robert, Shams, Khawaja Salman, Moore, Kevin, Hegar, Ryan Paul
• Primary Examiner(s): Elahi, Shan E
• Application Number:
  US15/968,669
• Time in Patent Office: 721 Days
• Field of Search: 37524028
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4015 where at least one of the additional parallel sessions is real time or time sensitive, e.g. white board sharing, collaboration or spawning of a subconference
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/61 for supporting one-way streaming services, e.g. Internet radio
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/70 Media network packetisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/764 at the destination reformatting of additional data in video clients H04N21/4355
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/115 Selection of the code volume for a coding unit prior to coding
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/12 Selection from among a plurality of transforms or standards, e.g. selection between discrete cosine transform [DCT] and sub-band transform or selection between H.263 and H.264
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/136 Incoming video signal characteristics or properties
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/166 concerning the amount of transmission errors, e.g. bit error rate [BER]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/179 the unit being a scene or a shot

Abstract

A video packaging and origination service can include one or more encoder components that receive content for encoding and transmitting to requesting entities. During the operation of the encoder components, individual encoders receive input signals for encoding and determine quality metric information related to the generation of an encoded segment. The encoder components exchange quality metric information and an encoder component is selected to transmit an encoded segment. The selection of an individual encoder component per segment can continue throughout the streaming process.

Claims

1. A system to encode content comprising:

at least one computing device associated with a first encoder component, wherein the first encoder component is configured to;

receive content to be encoded according to an encoding profile;

determine first quality metric information related to the content to be encoded, wherein the quality metric information includes an availability of the first encoder component, a quality measurement of an input signal to the first encoder component corresponding to the content to be encoded corresponding from a first source, and a determination of whether the first encoder component can transmit to an identified destination; and

transmit the first quality metric information to a second encoder component; and

at least one computing device associated with a second encoder component, wherein the second encoder component is configured to;

receive content to be encoded according to an encoding profile;

determine second quality metric information related to the content to be encoded, wherein the quality metric information includes at least two of an availability of the second encoder component, a quality measurement of an input signal to the second encoder component corresponding to the content to be encoded corresponding to a second input source, a determination of whether the second encoder component can transmit to an identified destination, or a quality measurement regarding a degree to which the encoded segment reproduces the input signal; and

transmit the second quality metric information to the first encoder component;

wherein the first and second encoder components select to transmit a current segment of the content to be encoded based on a processing of the first and second quality metric information.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the destination corresponds to a media endpoint.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the destination corresponds to a user device.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the first and second encoder components select to transmit the current segment based at least in part on an encoder component that transmitted a previous segment of the content to be encoded.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the first encoder component corresponds to a first availability zone and wherein the second encoder component corresponds to a second availability zone.

6. A computer-implemented method to manage encoder components comprising:

receiving content to be encoded;

transmitting quality metric information related to the content to be encoded to at least one additional encoder component; and

selecting whether to transmit an encoded segment based at least in part on a processing of the quality metric information.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein the quality metric information includes at least one of an availability of a second encoder component, a quality measurement of an input signal to the second encoder component corresponding to the content to be encoded corresponding to a second input source a determination of whether the second encoder component can transmit to an identified destination, or a quality measurement regarding a degree to which the encoded segment reproduces the input signal.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the quality metric information includes an availability of the second encoder component, a quality measurement of an input signal to the second encoder component corresponding to the content to be encoded corresponding to a second input source a determination of whether the second encoder component can transmit to an identified destination and a quality measurement regarding a degree to which the encoded segment reproduces the input signal.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 6 further comprising transmitting to a destination responsive to a selection to transmit the encoded segment.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, wherein the destination corresponds to a storage location.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, wherein the destination corresponds to a user device requesting the encoded content.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein the at least one additional encoder component corresponds to an encoder component associated with a different availability zone.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein selecting whether to transmit an encoded segments based at least in part on the processing of the quality metric information further includes selecting whether to transmit encoded segments based on an encoder component associated with a previous encoded segment.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, wherein selecting whether to transmit encoded segments based on an encoder component associated with a previous encoded segment includes selecting the encoder component associated with the previous encoded segment based on exceeding quality metric threshold.

15. A computer-implemented method to manage encoder components comprising:

receiving quality metric information related to a plurality of encoder components configured to provide encoded content responsive to a request, wherein the plurality of encoder components correspond to different availability zones; and

selecting an encoder component of the plurality of encoder components to transmit an encoded segment based at least in part on a comparison of the received quality metric information from the plurality of encoder components.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 15, wherein the quality metric information includes at least a combination of two or more an availability of a second encoder component, a quality measurement of an input signal to the second encoder component corresponding to the content to be encoded corresponding to a second input source, a determination of whether the second encoder component can transmit to an identified destination or a quality measurement regarding a degree to which the encoded segment reproduces the input signal.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 15, wherein selecting an encoder component to transmit an encoded segment based at least in part on a comparison of the received quality metric information includes determining to transmit the encoded segment.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 15, wherein selecting an encoder component to transmit an encoded segment based at least in part on a comparison of the received quality metric information includes determining to not transmit the encoded segment.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 15 further comprising transmitting a notification of a selection of an encoder component to transmit an encoded segment based at least in part on a comparison of the received quality metric information.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 15 further comprising transmitting quality metric information among the plurality of encoder components.