Dynamic bitrate allocation of interactive real-time streamed multi-view video with view-switch prediction

Abstract

In multi-view video (MVV), the real-world scene is usually captured by more than two cameras positioned in an array. A viewer can consume MVV using either a non-interactive or an interactive transmission method. In the context of interactive MVV streaming, view switching may cause a long delay due to the frequent requests by the viewer. In this paper, we consider the use case of real-time interactive MVV (IMVV) streaming, where the view switching delay problem has a significant user experience impact. Our proposed method compress and send all the captured views using a dynamic bitrate allocation method. Also, a novel prediction algorithm has been used to choose possible views that the user might switch to. The predicted view switching is mapped to a hidden Markov model, and the transition probability is solved using Zipf distribution. The experimental results of the proposed method show a superior performance on an objective metric and view-switching delay for better viewing quality over the existing method.