Systems and Methods of Encoding Trick Play Streams for Use in Adaptive Streaming

• US 20190045219A1
• Filed: 10/09/2018
• Published: 02/07/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 01/05/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: DivX, LLC (f/k/a DivX CF Holdings LLC) (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: DivX, LLC (f/k/a DivX CF Holdings LLC) (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Braness, Jason, van der Schaar, Auke Sjoerd, Soroushian, Kourosh
• Granted Patent: US 10,382,785 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/005 Reproducing at a different information rate from the information rate of recording for television signals H04N5/783
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/11 by using information not detectable on the record carrier
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/322 used signal is digitally coded
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/613 for the control of the source by the destination control signals issued by the client directed to the server or network components specially adapted for selective content distribution H04N21/637
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/70 Media network packetisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/172 the region being a picture, frame or field
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/177 the unit being a group of pictures [GOP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/40 using video transcoding, i.e. partial or full decoding of a coded input stream followed by re-encoding of the decoded output stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/593 involving spatial prediction techniques
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234345 the reformatting operation being performed only on part of the stream, e.g. a region of the image or a time segment
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23439 for generating different versions
• 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 21/26258 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 21/2662 Controlling the complexity of the video stream, e.g. by scaling the resolution or bitrate of the video stream based on the client capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42607 for processing the incoming bitstream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/435 Processing of additional data, e.g. decrypting of additional data, reconstructing software from modules extracted from the transport stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44004 involving video buffer management, e.g. video decoder buffer or video display buffer
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44008 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in the video stream arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• 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 21/6587 : Control parameters, e.g. trick play commands, viewpoint selection
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8455 : involving pointers to the content, e.g. pointers to the I-frames of the video stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 : by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/85406 : involving a specific file format, e.g. MP4 format
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8543 : using a description language, e.g. Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group [MHEG], eXtensible Markup Language [XML] information retrieval of semistructured data, the underlying structure being taken into account, e.g. mark-up language structure data G06F16/80

Abstract

Systems and methods for encoding source media in Matroska container files for adaptive bitrate streaming utilizing Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. One embodiment of the invention includes a processor configured via a source encoding application to ingest at least one multimedia file containing a source video. In addition, the source encoding application further configures the processor to select a portion of the source video, transcode the selected portion of the source video into a plurality of alternative portions of encoded video, where each alternative portion is encoded using a different set of encoding parameters and commences with an intra frame starting a closed Group of Pictures (GOP), write each of the alternative portions of encoded video to an element of a different EBML container file, where each element is located within an EBML container file that also includes another element that indicates the encoding parameters used to encode the alternative portion of encoded video, and add an entry to at least one index that identifies the location of the element containing one of the alternative portions of encoded video within each of the EBML container files.

Claims

1. A content distribution system, comprising:

a set of one or more encoding servers, wherein each server of the set of encoding servers comprises;

a non-volatile storage containing an encoder application;

at least one processor;

wherein the encoder applications cause the encoding servers to encode source content as a plurality of alternative streams each having a different bitrate, an audio stream, and at least one trick play stream by performing the steps of;

identifying a plurality of sections of the source content;

for each particular section of the plurality of sections;

encoding the particular section to produce a plurality of encodings of the particular section for each of the plurality of alternative streams, wherein the plurality of encodings of the particular section comprises encodings at a plurality of different bitrates; and

encoding the particular section to produce at least one encoding of the particular section for at least one trick play stream, where;

the at least one trick play stream is encoded at a lower frame rate than the frame rates of the plurality of alternative streams, and

each frame of the trick play stream is an IDR picture; and

uploading the plurality of encodings of the particular section and the at least one trick play stream on a set of servers that form part of a content distribution system.

2. The content distribution system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of encodings is stored in a set of one or more container files.

3. The content distribution system of claim 2, wherein the set of servers that form part of the content distribution system are configured to generate a top level index that identifies each of the container files containing the alternative streams used during normal playback of the encoded video and identifies the container file that includes the trick play stream used during visual search of the encoded video.

4. The content distribution system of claim 1, wherein the set of servers that form part of the content distribution system are configured to:

receive a request for content from a client device, where the requested content comprises the at least one trick play stream; and

provide the requested content to the client device.

5. The content distribution system of claim 4, wherein:

the set of servers that form part of the content distribution system are configured to;

generate a top-level index and a container index; and

provide the top level index and container index to the client device; and

the received request for content from the client device is a byte range request for a portion of the at least one of the encodings from one of the plurality of alternative streams.

6. The content distribution system of claim 1, wherein the at least one trick play stream comprises a plurality of trick play streams.

7. The content distribution system of claim 1, wherein the at least one trick play stream is encoded at a lower bit rate than the plurality of alternative streams.

8. The content distribution system of claim 1, wherein the set of servers that form part of the content distribution system are configured to:

generate a container index that provides byte ranges for portions of a selected stream within an associated container file; and

provide the container index to a client device.

9. The content distribution system of claim 1, wherein there are fewer frames in the at least one encoding of the particular section for the at least one trick play stream than the plurality of encodings of the particular section for each of the plurality of alternative streams and each frame has a longer duration.

10. A method for a set of one or more encoding servers of a content distribution system to encode source content as a plurality of alternative streams each having a different bitrate, an audio stream, and at least one trick play stream, the method comprising:

identifying a plurality of sections of the source content;

for each particular section of the plurality of sections;

encoding the particular section to produce a plurality of encodings of the particular section for each of the plurality of alternative streams, wherein the plurality of encodings of the particular section comprises encodings at a plurality of different bitrates;

encoding the particular section to produce at least one encoding of the particular section for at least one trick play stream, where;

the at least one trick play stream is encoded at a lower frame rate than the frame rates of the plurality of alternative streams, and

each frame of the trick play stream is an DR picture; and

uploading the plurality of encodings of the particular section and the at least one trick play stream on a set of servers that form part of a content distribution system.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the plurality of encodings is stored in a set of one or more container files.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising generating a top level index that identifies each of the container files containing the alternative streams used during normal playback of the encoded video and identifies the container file that includes the trick play stream used during visual search of the encoded video.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

receiving a request for content from a client device, where the requested content comprises the at least one trick play stream; and

providing the requested content to the client device.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

generating a top-level index and a container index; and

providing the top level index and container index to the client device;

wherein the received request for content from the client device is a byte range request for a portion of the at least one of the encodings from one of the plurality of alternative streams.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein the at least one trick play stream comprises a plurality of trick play streams.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein the at least one trick play stream is encoded at a lower bit rate than the plurality of alternative streams.

17. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

generating a container index that provides byte ranges for portions of the selected stream within an associated container file; and

providing the container index to a client device.

18. The method of claim 10, wherein there are fewer frames in the at least one encoding of the particular section for the at least one trick play stream than the plurality of encodings of the particular section for each of the plurality of alternative streams and each frame has a longer duration.