Playback Restart in Interactive Streaming Video Applications

Low latency is crucial in networked multimedia applications such as on-demand streaming audio and video. In this paper, we consider the problem of restarting or resuming playback following an interactive operation such as fast forward, rewind, or indexed jump in stored on-demand video. We present two approaches to restart playback after an interactive operation, and develop algorithms to compute the latencies incurred in restarting playback. Using long MPEG-1 traces, with an optimal smoothing technique [11] to transmit data for regular playback, we demonstrate that the latencies incurred under our approaches are very small. We next examine the latencies incurred when restarting playback in a video server under two policies for sharing its bandwidth: (a) one in which only regular playback bandwidth is available to restart playback, and (b) one in which additional free server bandwidth (if any) is accessible. We find playback restart latencies to be similarly low under both policies, suggesting that the simpler approach (a) is sufficient.