SAVE: An Algorithm For Smoothed Adaptive Video Over Explicit Rate Networks

Abstract — Supporting compressed video efficiently on networks is a challenge because of its burstiness. Although a large number of applications using compressed video allow adaptive rates, it is also important to preserve quality as much as possible. We propose a smoothing and rate adaptation algorithm for compressed video, called SAVE, that is used in conjunction with explicit rate based control in the network. SAVE smooths the demand from the source to the network, thus helping achieve good multiplexing gains. SAVE maintains the qual-ity of the video and ensures that the delay at the source buffer does not exceed a bound. We show that SAVE is effective by demonstrat-ing its performance across 28 different traces (entertainment and teleconferencing videos) that use different compression algorithms