Generic Application Level Rate Control for Scalable Video Using Shadow Probing

A generic application level rate control (ARC) for scalable video is presented. The ARC is designed to operate between a streaming video application (server-side) and a transport level rate control (TRC). TFRC is used as a reference TRC when evaluating the proposed mechanisms. When using scalable video such as H.264/SVC, incrementation of quality layers may cause significant increase in the sending rate. The ARC utilizes a technique we name "shadow probing", which protects the established video layers from packet loss in these situations. Also, highly variable estimates of available bandwidth reported by the TRC are hidden from the application, in order to reduce the frequency of adding and dropping layers. Simulation results are presented showing that the mechanisms are able to improve perceived quality for both interactive and streaming video in networks with and without QoS support.