Efficient HTTP-based streaming using Scalable Video Coding

HTTP-based video streaming has been gaining popularity within the recent years. There are multiple benefits of relying on HTTP/TCP connections, such as the usage of the widely deployed network caches to relieve video servers from sending the same content to a high number of users and the avoidance of traversal issues with firewalls and NATs typical for RTP/UDP-based solutions. Therefore, many service providers resort to adopt HTTP streaming as the basis for their services. In this paper, the benefits of using the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) for a HTTP streaming service are shown, and the SVC based approach is compared to the AVC based approach. We show that network resources are more efficiently used and how the benefits of the traditional techniques can even be heightened by adopting the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) as the video codec for adaptive low delay streaming over HTTP. For the latter small playout-buffers are considered hence allowing low media access latency in the delivery chain and it is shown that adaptation is more effectively performed with the SVC based approach.