Implementing fast bandwidth smoothing algorithms for the delivery of compressed video streams

Bandwidth smoothing algorithms can effectively reduce the network resource requirements for the delivery of compressed video streams. For stored video, a large number of bandwidth smoothing algorithms have been introduced that are optimal under certain constraints but require access to all the frame size data in order to achieve their optimal properties. This constraint, however, can be both resource and computationally expensive, especially for moderately priced set‐top‐boxes. In this paper, we introduce a movie approximation technique for the representation of the frame sizes of a video, reducing the complexity of the bandwidth smoothing algorithms and the amount of frame data that must be transmitted prior to the start of playback. Our results show that the proposed approximation technique can accurately approximate the frame data with a small number of piece‐wise linear segments without affecting the performance measures that the bandwidth smoothing algorithms are attempting to achieve by more than 1%. In addition, we show that implementations of this technique can speed up execution times by 100 to 1400 times, allowing the bandwidth plans to be calculated in real‐time. Evaluation using both a Motion‐JPEG encoded video and an MPEG encoded video is provided.