Video quality monitoring

• US 10,674,387 B2
• Filed: 11/09/2018
• Issued: 06/02/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ineoquest Technologies Incorporated (Telestream Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Ineoquest Technologies Incorporated (Telestream Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Dion, Gino Louis, Newton, Stuart W., Harrison, Calvin W., Welch, James T., Dawson, Peter S.
• Primary Examiner(s): Zaidi, Iqbal
• Application Number:
  US16/185,412
• Publication Number:
  US 20190082339A1
• Time in Patent Office: 571 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23424 involving splicing one content stream with another content stream, e.g. for inserting or substituting an advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2387 Stream processing in response to a playback request from an end-user, e.g. for trick-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2402 Monitoring of the downstream path of the transmission network, e.g. bandwidth available traffic monitoring in data switching networks H04L43/00; monitoring data switching networks utilization H04L43/0876
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2404 Monitoring of server processing errors or hardware failure error or fault detection G06F11/07; monitoring in general G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4331 Caching operations, e.g. of an advertisement for later insertion during playback
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43615 Interfacing a Home Network, e.g. for connecting the client to a plurality of peripherals home Audio Video Interoperability [HAVI] data switching networks H04L12/2805
• 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 21/44226 on social networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44227 Monitoring of local network, e.g. connection or bandwidth variations; Detecting new devices in the local network configuring of peripheral devices in general G06F9/4411; monitoring connectivity in data switched networks H04L43/0811
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4425 Monitoring of client processing errors or hardware failure
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6125 involving transmission via Internet transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6131 involving transmission via a mobile phone network wireless downlink channel access H04W74/006
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6373 for rate control , e.g. request to the server to modify its transmission rate flow control in packet networks H04L47/10
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64322 IP
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6473 Monitoring network processes errors for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic

Abstract

Methods for monitoring quality metrics of a video session that uses traffic transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility are disclosed. A method for monitoring quality of a video system that uses traffic transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility may include monitoring the mobile video delivery network facility that handles at least a portion of the video traffic for the video session for information about the video traffic at a location of the mobile video delivery network facility and monitoring at least one user mobile device that plays the video delivered by the mobile video delivery network facility using a software development kit (SDK) that reports at least one media delivery quality metric.

Claims

1. A method for monitoring quality of a video session that uses traffic transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, the method comprising:

monitoring the mobile video delivery network facility that handles at least a portion of video traffic for the video session for information about the video traffic at a location of the mobile video delivery network facility;

monitoring at least one user mobile device that plays video delivered by the mobile video delivery network facility using a software development kit (SDK) that reports at least one media delivery quality metric; and

delivering information concerning the monitored at least one user mobile device and facility from a location of the mobile video delivery network facility and from the SDK to a collection application, wherein the collection application is used to measure an impact of a state of the monitored at least one user mobile device on the quality of the video played on the monitored at least one user mobile device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the collection application is a virtualized application.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the collection application is deployed on a dedicated server.

4. A method for monitoring quality of a video session that uses video traffic transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, the method comprising:

monitoring a first mobile delivery network facility that handles at least a portion of the video traffic for a session for information about the video traffic for at least one operational metric;

monitoring a second mobile video delivery network facility that handles at least a portion of the video traffic for the session for information about the video traffic for at least one behavioral metric; and

reporting the at least one operational metric and the at least one behavioral metric to a collection application,

wherein the collection application is used to measure an impact of a state of a monitored location of the mobile video delivery network facility on the quality of the video session played on a user mobile device, and wherein the at least one operational metric is selected from a group consisting of packet jitter growth, media delivery quality, packet loss, instantaneous flow rate balance (IFRB), delay between packets, a jitter statistic, a total time required to receive all packets needed to fully assemble a segment, statistics of errors in key frames, a measure of HTTP transport quality and a measure of DNS resolution performance.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the collection application is a virtualized application.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the collection application is deployed on a dedicated server.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the at least one behavioral metric is selected from a group consisting of TCP video access time exceeded, TCP video access failure, buffer fill time exceeded, buffer full condition not met, download rate, video terminated by server, video terminated by network, video sessions counted, video startup time exceeded, video startup time failure, service access time exceeded, service access failure, DNS lookup time exceeded, DNS lookup failures, user-communicated video quality, user selected early session termination, and user selected trick modes.

8. A method for monitoring quality of a video session that uses traffic transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, the method comprising:

monitoring a server that is a source of video traffic for a video session delivered over a mobile video delivery network facility using a passive monitor;

monitoring the server that is the source of video traffic using an active monitor that pulls media segments from the server using the mobile video delivery network facility,

reporting information from the passive monitor and the active monitor to a remote collection and computing system; and

at the remote collection and computing system, correlating response times from the active monitor and the passive monitor to determine performance of at least one of the mobile video delivery network facility or a content delivery network (CDN) facility with respect to at least one metric,

wherein the at least one metric is selected from a group consisting of caching performance and network response time, a media delivery composite metric, a measure of quality of experience, a measure of real-time capacity of a cell tower to deliver video traffic, a quality-of-service tag, and an indicator of prioritization applied to a viewing device.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the remote collection and computing system is a virtualized system.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the remote collection and computing system is a dedicated system.

11. A method for monitoring quality of a video session that uses traffic transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, the method comprising:

monitoring at least one device within the mobile video delivery network facility using a transparent proxy server that is disposed within the at least one device, wherein the transparent proxy server reports at least one of information about operation of the at least one device and performance of the mobile video delivery network facility to a host system that collects information about the performance of the mobile video delivery network facility;

reporting information from the transparent proxy server to a remote collection and computing system; and

at the remote collection and computing system, correlating response times from the transparent proxy server to determine performance of at least one of the mobile video delivery network facility or a content delivery network (CDN) facility with respect to at least one metric,

wherein the at least one metric is selected from a group consisting of caching performance and network response time, a media delivery composite metric, a measure of quality of experience, a measure of real-time capacity of a cell tower to deliver video traffic, a quality-of-service tag, and an indicator of prioritization applied to a viewing device.