Implementation of adaptive streaming of stored MPEG-4 FGS video over TCP

This paper presents an implementation of an end-to-end application for streaming stored MPEG-4 fine-grained scalable (FGS) videos over the best-effort Internet. Our current implementation runs over TCP but can also be run over TCP-friendly RTP/UDP with an error recovery mechanism. Our scheme adapts the coding rate of the streaming video to the variations of the available bandwidth for the connection, while smoothing changes in image quality between consecutive video scenes. We justify our design choices and present the results of the simulations obtained from our testbed. Our combined use of FGS-encoded video with a simple network-adaptation heuristic gives a system of low complexity, which is suitable for high performing video servers.