An Evaluation of Bitrate Adaptation Methods for HTTP Live Streaming

HTTP streaming has become a cost-effective means for multimedia delivery nowadays. For adaptivity to networks and terminals, a provider should generate multiple representations of an original video as well as the related metadata. Recently, there have been various adaptation methods to support adaptive HTTP streaming. In this paper, we investigate typical adaptation methods in the context of live video streaming. We first discuss the trade-off among typical adaptation methods. The evaluation and comparison are then carried out not only in terms of bitrate and buffer behaviors but also in terms of the perceptual impact on end users. It is found that the perceptual impact depends not only on adaptation method but also on the content itself. We also show that the preparation of representation sets may affect the behaviors of some adaptation methods.