Dual-plan bandwidth smoothing for layer-encoded video

Traditional bandwidth smoothing techniques can be supported naturally by the renegotiated constant bit rate (RCBR) service model, but renegotiation failure in RCBR may cause buffer underflow and interrupt the playback of video. To address this concern, a novel dual-plan bandwidth smoothing scheme is proposed by taking advantage of layer-encoded video. Upon renegotiation failure, the proposed scheme can adaptively discard enhancement layers to guarantee continuous video playback at the original frame rate. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the validity of the proposed scheme and the impact of playback buffer size on the resulting video quality degradation.