Client Buffering Considerations for Video Streaming

An important issue in the performance of Video Streaming systems is the data transmission mechanism used by the server. Streaming servers can use a variety of techniques, which have an impact on a number of metrics associated with the performance and the quality of the video presentation. One of the related issues is the assignment of buffer space at the client in order to hold data that has arrived earlier than their playback time. In this article, we conduct a number of experiments with MPEG-4 compressed video, in order to obtain buffering occupancy values for various transmission mechanisms. In particular, we consider some of the mechanisms used by YouTube video servers, and contrast their performance with that of other mechanisms.