Evaluating multimedia networking mechanisms using video traces

The networked multimedia application, which has the increasing popularity of video data, is expected to account for a large portion of the traffic in the Internet of the future and in next-generation wireless systems. This article introduces video traces which gives the sizes of the individual video frames in a video sequence and also outlines how they characterize encoded video and can be used in evaluating multimedia networking mechanisms. One advantage of the video bit stream is that it allows for networking experiments where the quality of the video can be visually evaluated. Thus with the steady-state simulation approach, a single simulation run is performed and the metrics of interest are typically obtained during independent observation periods.