A QoS monitoring method for video streaming service based on presentation-timeline detection at user clients

This work describes a new method for monitoring QoS of an IP-based video streaming system at the user clients. To comprehend the received quality at the client PC, we focus on detecting the application processes about presentation timeline of individual video frames. In this paper, we define the start-up delay and scene-misalignment time as the indicators of received quality at the client. To detect these parameters, we use the time-code of the video frames, playback-state of the client´s player application, and time information from the operating system. Additionally, we have developed a prototype that is capable of measuring the start-up delay and scene-misalignment time of a video streaming for use in real-time QoS management To evaluate the effectiveness of the system, we performed experiments with the prototype, using 20-minute-long and 1-Mb/s video streams delivered over the Internet. We studied the quality characteristics of the streams arriving at clients and monitored the above two QoS-related parameters and the buffering time. We also checked the effect of the transport protocol, i.e. whether the TCP or UDP is used. The findings are then used as the basis for discussing the applicability of our proposed method. Evaluation confirmed that our system is effective as a means for managing the QoS levels of video streams being delivered over IP networks.