A playback length changeable segmentation algorithm for SVC-based P2P streaming systems

In this paper, we first probe into the data characteristics of SVC and analyze their impacts on P2P segmentation algorithms. According to our studies, the equal playback length segmentation (EPLS) algorithm, which is widely used in current SVC-based P2P streaming systems, does not consider the data characteristics of SVC adequately and thus is easy to cause significant degradation of video quality on clients. Then we propose a novel segmentation algorithm named PLCS (playback length changeable segmentation) for SVC-based P2P streaming systems. In the PLCS algorithm, the playback length of chunks in each layer is determined according to the level of importance in combination with the size of the layer. We evaluate the performance of the PLCS algorithm through experiments and simulations. The results show that compared with the EPLS algorithm, the PLCS algorithm can increase the transmission success rate of layers with higher level of importance and thus can improve the video quality on clients significantly, especially in networks with high packet loss rate.