MPEG video streaming with VCR functionality

With the proliferation of online multimedia content, the popularity of multimedia streaming technology, and the establishment of MPEG video coding standards, it is important to investigate how to efficiently implement an MPEG video streaming system. Digital video cassette recording (VCR) functionality enables quick and user friendly browsing of multimedia content, thus is highly desirable in streaming video applications. The implementation of full VCR functionality, however, presents several technical challenges which have not yet been well resolved. We investigate the impacts of the VCR functionality on the video decoder complexity and the network traffic. We propose a least-cost scheme for the efficient implementation of the MPEG streaming video system to provide full VCR functionality over a network with minimum requirements on the network bandwidth and the decoder complexity. We also discuss our implementation of an IP-based MPEG-4 video streaming platform which provides full VCR functions.