A-REaLiSTIQ-ViBe: Entangling Encoding and Transport to Improve Live Video Experience

Combined performance of encoder and the transport mechanism is responsible for end-user experience of live video stream under varying end-to-end channel condition. However, traditionally these two aspects are disjointed in the existing system. As a result, the encoders react much slowly to varying channel conditions and the protocols undermine the user experience aspects while trying to maintain the bitrate. In this paper we present a completely new integrated approach to address this gap. The proposed solution tightly couples a novel delta-encoding approach leveraging nuances of JPEG encoder and background-subtraction with a unique protocol that entangles the packetization and exchange semantics with the source encoding part. On one hand the system enjoys the simplicity and fast frame-by-frame reaction due to inherently using MJPEG. On the other hand, it is highly bandwidth efficient and error resilient due the underlying protocol. The performance of the proposed end-to-end system is compared against standard WebRTC for both QoS and QoE aspects under emulated environment with practical impairments.