Performance evaluation of streaming algorithms for network cameras

In this article we present the performance evaluation of different algorithms to distribute video frames from network cameras to multiple concurrent clients in real-time. The algorithms evaluated in this paper rely on a pool of buffers shared by all the clients. We implement these algorithms in the VLC media player and study their performance in terms of frame rate, hardware resource usage and decoding errors. Moreover, we compare their performance to the VLC streaming algorithm. Experimental results show that well designed algorithms combined with a sufficient number of buffers significantly outperform the VLC streaming algorithm.