Chasing Linux Jitter Sources for Uncompressed Video

Beyond the transport of uncompressed video over IP networks, defined in standards such as ST2022-6, the ability to build software-based Video Processing Functions (VPF) on commodity hardware and using general purpose Operating Systems is the next logical step in the evolution of the media industry towards an “all-IP” world. In that context, understanding the jitter induced on an ST2022-6 stream by a commodity platform is essential. This paper describes a general methodology to enumerate jitter sources on commodity platforms and to quantity their relative contribution to the overall system jitter. The methodology is applied to the Linux kernel, producing a classification of the different sources of jitter, and a quantification of their impact.