Flexible storage placement of digital video media

In addition to the large data size requirement and real-time constraint in continuous media, future video applications such as video editing demands the flexible storage placement and the random access capability on the video-frame level. To offer efficient buffering schemes and flexible storage placement for supporting random access, we present two buffering schemes: the two-buffer scheme and the k-buffer compensation scheme. The two-buffer scheme requires only all the frames in a block to be stored consecutively while providing random access between blocks. However, this intuitive buffering scheme potentially requires a large block size and buffer space. The k-buffer compensation scheme is proposed to resolve this large buffer space requirement by using more than two buffers and requiring a minimal number of blocks randomly placed in each cylinder. Experimental measurement results reveal the significant improvements on the buffer-size reduction and placement flexibility by using the k-buffer compensation scheme