R-D hint tracks for low-complexity R-D optimized video streaming [rate-distortion hint track]

This work presents the concept of rate-distortion hint track (RDHT), and evaluates two specific implementations of streaming systems that employ RDHT. Using RDHT, low-complexity streaming can be realized for systems that adapt to variations in transport conditions such as bandwidth or packet loss. An RDHT-based streaming system has three components: (1) an R-D hint track; (2) an algorithm for using the RDHT to predict the distortion for different packet schedules; and (3) a method for determining the best packet schedule. Two RDHT-based systems are presented which perform R-D optimized scheduling with dramatically reduced complexity as compared to conventional on-line R-D optimized streaming algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate that for the difficult case of R-D optimized scheduling of non-scalably coded video the proposed systems provide 7-12 dB gain when adapting to a bandwidth constraint and 2-4 dB gain when adapting to random packet loss, both relative to a conventional streaming system that does not take into account the different importance of individual packets.