Our latest research paper in ACM TOMM focuses on how video streaming systems can better utilize available bandwidth to provide users with an improved Quality of Experience (QoE). Instead of offering a small number of discrete quality levels (bit rate ladder), a continuous range of qualities (Continuous Bit Rate Slide, COBIRAS) should be provided, i.e., segments with arbitrary bit rate. Additionally, a newly proposed adaptation algorithm called MinOff can minimize download pauses during video streaming, further increasing bandwidth utilization. For the proposed COBIRAS video streaming system to be practical, the storage requirements must be significantly reduced, which can be achieved through the use of Just-in-Time Encoding (JITE), that is, real-time encoding of video streaming segments.

Title: "COBIRAS: Offering a Continuous Bit Rate Slide to Maximize DASH Streaming Bandwidth Utilization"
Authors: Michael Seufert, Marius Spangenberger, Fabian Poignée, Florian Wamser, Werner Robitza, Christian Timmerer, Tobias Hoßfeld
Journal: ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications, 2024
Link: https://doi.org/10.1145/367737