HTML5 video on mobile browsers

This paper reports on research investigating the current ability of HTML5 to play video in mobile browsers. Smartphones and the Mobile Internet are rapidly becoming an important platform for access to information anytime and anywhere. HTML5, the new HTML standard incorporates features like video playback that have been previously dependent on third-party browser plug-ins but there are no browsers that currently provide 100% support for HTML5. All the tests reported in this paper were carried out using smartphones with screen sizes 3.0 to 4.8 inches and the ability to replay videos of a range of formats, move directly to time points in the video and display closed captions were investigated. Key findings were that: video cannot be started programmatically; only selecting on the screen can trigger playback; no visual elements sitting over the <video> will receive click events while the video is visible (playing or paused); there are many HTML5 video players but MediaElement.js was found to currently be the open source player satisfying the greatest number of requirements

An Analysis of VP8, a new video codec for the web

Video is an increasingly ubiquitous part of our lives. Fast and efficient video codecs are necessary to satisfy the increasing demand for video on the web and mobile devices. However, open standards and patent grants are paramount to the adoption of video codecs across different platforms and browsers. Google On2 released VP8 in May 2010 to compete with H.264, the current standard of video codecs, complete with source code, specification and a perpetual patent grant. As the amount of video being created every day is growing rapidly, the decision of which codec to encode this video with is paramount; if a low quality codec or a restrictively licensed codec is used, the video recorded might be of little to no use. We sought to study VP8 and its quality versus its resource consumption compared to H.264 -- the most popular current video codec -- so that reader may make an informed decision for themselves or for their organizations about whether to use H.264 or VP8, or something else entirely. We examined VP8 in detail, compared its theoretical complexity to H.264 and measured the efficiency of its current implementation. VP8 shares many facets of its design with H.264 and other Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) based video codecs. However, VP8 is both simpler and less feature rich than H.264, which may allow for rapid hardware and software implementations. As it was designed for the Internet and newer mobile devices, it contains fewer legacy features, such as interlacing, than H.264 supports. To perform quality measurements, the open source VP8 implementation libvpx was used. This is the reference implementation. For H.264, the open source H.264 encoder x264 was used. This encoder has very high performance, and is often rated at the top of its field in efficiency. The JM reference encoder was used to establish a baseline quality for H.264. Our findings indicate that VP8 performs very well at low bitrates, at resolutions at and below CIF. VP8 may be able to successfully displace H.264 Baseline in the mobile streaming video domain. It offers higher quality at a lower bitrate for low resolution images due to its high performing entropy coder and non-contiguous macroblock segmentation. At higher resolutions, VP8 still outperforms H.264 Baseline, but H.264 High profile leads. At HD resolution (720p and above), H.264 is significantly better than VP8 due to its superior motion estimation and adaptive coding. There is little significant difference between the intra-coding performance between H.264 and VP8. VP8\u27s in-loop deblocking filter outperforms H.264\u27s version. H.264\u27s inter-coding, with full support for B frames and weighting outperforms VP8\u27s alternate reference scheme, although this may improve in the future. On average, VP8\u27s feature set is less complex than H.264\u27s equivalents, which, along with its open source implementation, may spur development in the future. These findings indicate that VP8 has strong fundamentals when compared with H.264, but that it lacks optimization and maturity. It will likely improve as engineers optimize VP8\u27s reference implementation, or when a competing implementation is developed. We recommend several areas that the VP8 developers should focus on in the future

Network Performance in HTML5 Video Connections

[EN] Currently, most of remote education systems use video streaming as the main basis to support teaching. These emissions can be seen in devices with different hardware features such as personal computers, tablets or smartphones through networks with different capacities. The use of different web browsers and coding options can also influence the network performance. Therefore, the quality of the video displayed may be different. This work presents a practical study to establish the best combination of web browsers and containers to encode multimedia files for videos streaming in personal computers running Windows 7 and Windows 10 operating systems. For this, a video encoded with different codecs and compressed with different containers have been transmitted through a 1000BaseT network. Finally, the results are analyzed and compared to determine which would be the most efficient combination of parameters according to the resolution of the transmitted video.This work has been partially supported by the European Union through the ERANETMED (Euromediterranean Cooperation through ERANET joint activities and beyond) project ERANETMED3-227 SMARTWATIR and by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte , through the Convocatoria 2016 - Proyectos I+D+I - Programa Estatal De Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación Orientada a los retos de la sociedad (Project TEC2016-76795-C6-4-R) and through the Convocatoria 2017 - Proyectos I+D+I - Programa Estatal de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación, convocatoria excelencia (Project TIN2017-84802-C2-1-P).Sendra, S.; Túnez-Murcia, AI.; Lloret, J.; Jimenez, JM. (2018). Network Performance in HTML5 Video Connections. Network Protocols and Algorithms. 10(3):43-62. https://doi.org/10.5296/npa.v10i3.13933S436210

Perceptually-Driven Video Coding with the Daala Video Codec

The Daala project is a royalty-free video codec that attempts to compete with the best patent-encumbered codecs. Part of our strategy is to replace core tools of traditional video codecs with alternative approaches, many of them designed to take perceptual aspects into account, rather than optimizing for simple metrics like PSNR. This paper documents some of our experiences with these tools, which ones worked and which did not. We evaluate which tools are easy to integrate into a more traditional codec design, and show results in the context of the codec being developed by the Alliance for Open Media.Comment: 19 pages, Proceedings of SPIE Workshop on Applications of Digital Image Processing (ADIP), 201

Portable Video Streaming Network

This dissertation addresses the challenge of developing a video call system capable of supporting both Android mobile devices and fixed computers. Addi tionally, it analyses the quality of video achieved and its variation in the presence of network bandwidth and packet loss constraints. A prototype of a video call system was implemented using a web application and the Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) library. Clients use WebRTC to stream video over a Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN) relay server, allowing them to send video to any terminal connected to the Internet. Signalling was implemented using WebSockets and a Node.js server. A quality testing prototype was also implemented, which supports sending pre-recorded videos and capturing and storing video recordings at the sender and receiver. The Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) metric was used as the main video quality metric, based on the comparison between the transmitted and received videos. The quality of a video encoded using the open source video encoder VP8 was analysed in constrained network setups. The results measured the video quality degradation and percentage of received frames, showing that the system is resilient to some bandwidth strangulation and packet loss, although with a noticeable video quality degradation.Esta dissertação aborda o desafio de desenvolver um sistema de videochamada capaz de suportar dispositivos móveis Android e computadores fixos. Além disso, analisa a qualidade do vídeo obtida e sua variação na presença de restrições de largura de banda da rede e perda de pacotes. Um protótipo de um sistema de videochamada foi implementado usando uma aplicação web e a biblioteca Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC). Os clientes usam WebRTC para transmitir o vídeo através de um servidor de retransmissão Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN), permitindo que enviem vídeo a qualquer cliente ligado à Internet. A sinalização foi implementada usando WebSockets e um servidor Node.js. Também foi implementado um protótipo de teste de qualidade, que suporta o envio de vídeos pré-gravados e a captura e armazenamento de gravações de vídeo no emissor e no recetor. A métrica Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) foi utilizada como a principal métrica de qualidade de vídeo, com base na comparação entre os vídeos transmitidos e recebidos. A qualidade de um vídeo codificado usando VP8 foi analisada em configurações de rede com limitações. Os resultados mediram a degradação da qualidade do vídeo e a percentagem de tramas recebidas, mostrando que o sistema é resiliente a algum estrangulamento da largura de banda e perda de pacotes, embora com uma degradação percetível da qualidade do vídeo

Compare multimedia frameworks in mobile platforms

Multimedia feature is currently one of the most important features in mobile devices. Many modern mobile platforms use a centralized software stack to handle multimedia requirements that software stack is called multimedia framework. Multimedia framework belongs to the middleware layer of mobile operating system. It can be considered as a bridge that connects mobile operating system kernel, hardware drivers with UI applications. It supplies high level APIs that offers simple and easy solutions for complicated multimedia tasks to UI application developers. Multimedia Framework also manages and utilizes low lever system software and hardware in an efficient manner. It offers a centralize solution between high level demands and low level system resources. In this M.Sc. thesis project we have studied, analyzed and compared open source GStreamer, Android Stagefright and Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework from several perspectives. Some of the comparison perspectives are architecture, supported use cases, extensibility, implementation language and program language support (bindings), developer support, and legal status aspects. One of the main contributions of this thesis work is that clarifying in details the strength and weaknesses of each framework. Furthermore, the thesis should serve decision-making guidance when on needs to select a multimedia framework for a project. Moreover, and to enhance the impression with the three multimedia frameworks, a basic media player implementation is demonstrated with source code in the thesis.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Analysis of Real Time Video Communication Systems

The most of the existing real time video communication systems mainly focus their work on providing better video quality throughout session. In quest of maintaining video quality they succeed in doing so at the cost of broken sessions, blocky video or sound disturbances when network bandwidth drops below required rate. The system described in this paper mainly concentrates on analysis of input parameters to audio and video encoder which affects the quality of communication. The input parameters to video encoder are altered such that a balance is maintained between video quality and continuity in communication. The input parameters to video encoderused for analysis are video frame size, and frames per second and target encode bitrate used for encoding video frame. The input parameters for audio encoder used for analysis are sampling frequency, bits per sample and no of audio channels used for recording sound. The input parameters to video encoderare changed frequently depending upon various factors such as bandwidth variations, and encodetime required on hardware used. In extreme low bandwidth situation the video is stopped. The communication should always keep alive throughout the session by keeping audio session connected always, so that users should not feel disconnected. The other important factors required for real time video communication to work smoothly are transport protocols used to carry media data and control data across peers. The protocols discussed in this paper are Real Time Protocol (RTP) and Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP). The media data generated at peers is transported using RTP and the control data describing the media data is transported using RTCP. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15083