New conference paper (IEEE MMSP 2019): Scalable 360 Video Streaming using HTTP/2

My latest work on 360-degree video streaming over network has been accepted for presentation at IEEE MMSP 2019.  This paper is a result of my collaborative research with Prof. Truong Thu Huong of HUST and Prof. Pham Ngoc Nam of Vin University.

Overview

360-degree video is a main content type in Virtual Reality, providing users with immersive viewing experience. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptation method for 360-degree video streaming over HTTP/2, which can provide high viewing experience to users under time-varying network conditions and time-varying user head movements. The proposed method utilizes Scalable Video Coding to solve the trade-off between network adaptivity and user adaptivity. An optimal tile layer selection
algorithm is provided. To cope with sudden throughput drops, the delivery of late layers are terminated using HTTP/2’s stream termination feature. Also, a tile layer updating scheme is proposed to deal with viewport estimation errors. Experimental results show that the proposed method can improve the average viewport bitrate by 16-17% compared to a reference method.

Key features

• Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is utilized to tackle the trade-off between network adaptivity and viewport adaptivity.
• The tile layer selection problem is formulated and an efficient algorithm is proposed.
• A late tile layer termination scheme is presented that can save network resources by terminating the delivery of late tile layers using HTTP/2’s stream termination feature.
• A tile layer updating scheme that can effectively deal with viewport estimation errors is proposed. The scheme makes use of HTTP/2’s stream priority feature.

Future work

In future work, our goal is to further improve the user experience by providing both temporally and spatially smooth viewport quality.