QoE enhancement in audiovisual and haptic interactive IP communications by media adaptive intra-stream synchronization

For audiovisual and haptic interactive IP communications, we propose a media adaptive intra-stream synchronization control scheme, which exerts control suitable for each media. We assess QoE (Quality of Experience) of the following three intra-stream synchronization control schemes: 1) media adaptive buffering, 2) Skipping & buffering and 3) buffering. Schemes 1 and 2 are examples of the media adaptive intra-stream synchronization control scheme. In media adaptive buffering, we set the playout buffering time for each media according to its property. In Skipping & buffering, we apply Skipping to haptic media and playout buffering to video and audio. Scheme 3 is the conventional playout buffering, which sets the same playout buffering time to the three media. We also investigate the effect of source skipping which reduces the transmission rate of the haptic media. For subjective experiment, we designed a task whose output quality of video and haptic media dominates QoE. We assess QoE multidimensionally by the SD (Semantic Differential) method. As a result of the assessment, we see that the combination of scheme 1 and the source skipping can achieve higher QoE than the other schemes.