Patent Application
20150146012
User perception of video presentation quality may be impacted by delay in starting the video presentation, skipping or pausing during video presentation, or visual graininess. The quality of the user's video viewing experience may be affected by techniques such as transcoding, buffering, and scaling.
Wireless communication poses challenges to video presentation quality. A wireless network link may have limited bandwidth that may also be reduced by noise, congestion, and distance or obstruction between the wireless device and its network access point. A cellular service provider network may further impact video presentation quality either accidentally with backhaul congestion or intentionally by throttling or transcoding. As such a conventional indicator of wireless link health, such as signal strength bars, might not accurately forecast video presentation quality.
Hand held devices are especially challenging to video presentation quality. Limited screen resolution makes the delivery of needlessly high quality video potentially wasteful of network transmission time or of device processing time spent downscaling. Although a remote server might offer different encodings of a video, wide variations in hand held screen resolutions diminish the likelihood that a video is available encoded in a device's native resolution. Any of these factors that impact video presentation quality may make it difficult for a user to predict how will be the user experience before actually playing a chosen video.
A wireless communication device displays video presentation quality for an identified video. The wireless communication device processes its device configuration data and wireless network performance data to estimate presentation quality of the identified video. The wireless communication device displays a video presentation activator that graphically indicates the estimated presentation quality for the identified video. If the video presentation activator is activated by a user, then the wireless communication device initiates a download and display of the identified video.
On display 110 wireless communication device 100 shows video presentation activator 120, which may be a graphical user interface widget such as a button. User activation of video presentation activator 120 begins a presentation of the identified video. This example includes videos A-C, which might not already reside on device 100. As illustrated by the dashed line, identified video B is the video identified by device 100. The presentation quality information of identified video B may include the capabilities of device 100, the condition of the wireless network and any other transport infrastructure involved, as well as the encoding of the video.
The visual appearance of video presentation activator 120 is rendered to indicate the presentation quality information obtained for the identified video. If the presentation quality of identified video B is likely to be low, video presentation activator 120 is rendered with one visual appearance. If the presentation quality of identified video B is likely to be high, video presentation activator 120 is rendered with another visual appearance that differs in a way that meaningfully indicates better quality. The user may regard the visually indicated presentation quality information as a forecast of the user experience to be expected during presentation of the identified video.
The states and operations involved with displaying video presentation quality on wireless communication device 100 are illustrated as behaviors 200 in
Media gateway 360 may perform video transcoding in a variety of ways. If the resolution of the identified video exceeds the screen resolution of device 301, then media gateway 360 may downscale the video. If the identified video originates in a format that is incompatible with wireless communication device 301, then media gateway 360 may transcode the video into a compatible format. If the frame rate is too high for device 301 to process, then media gateway 360 may reduce the frame rate. If a static or dynamic limitation on available downstream bandwidth does not accommodate the bit rate needed for the original encoding of the identified video, then media gateway 360 may reduce the frame rate or the pixel resolution of the video. When device 301 requests metadata or other presentation quality information of an identified video, media gateway 360 responds with information that reflects any caching or transcoding involved.
Wireless communication device 301 may obtain video presentation quality information that regards a variety of components in wireless communication system 300. Device 301 may gather data about the quality of wireless link 330 that connects device 301 to access point 340. Device 301 may measure signal strength and packet loss. Device 301 may also monitor the conditions and resources of access point 340, such as traffic and the availability of access slots. Alternatively device 301 may passively receive reports of such information from the access network. A report may include network weather information such as the level of congestion on link 350 that spans the backhaul and core network between access point 340 and media gateway 360. Device 301 uses the visual appearance of video presentation activator 320, as rendered on display 310, to indicate a summary of whatever presentation quality information is obtained for the identified video.
A wireless communication device has flexibility as to how it decorates a video presentation activator to reveal video presentation quality information. Some alternatives are illustrated in
Because of the limited bandwidth of access networks, a wireless communication device typically buffers video content before presentation begins. The user observes this initial buffering as a delay between when he requested that the presentation begin and when the presentation actually begins. An estimate of this initial delay may be included in the video presentation quality information, as illustrated in
Horizontal band 703 may show presentation quality details such as checkmark 710 to indicate that the wireless communication device and network have the capacity to play the selected encoding without skipping or pausing during the presentation. Picture quality meter 711 may indicate the resolution and frame rate of the selected encoding such that a left-pointing needle denotes low quality and a right-pointing needle denotes high quality. The size of the triangle within the top half of hourglass 712 indicates the relative initial buffering delay before presentation of the selected encoding can begin. If the picture quality of the currently selected encoding is inadequate, the user may select the next higher quality video encoding by pressing horizontal band 701 at the expense of a longer initial buffering delay. If the initial buffering delay is too long, the user may select the next faster buffering encoding by pressing horizontal band 702 at the expense of lower picture quality. When the desired video encoding is selected, the user may press horizontal band 703 to start the presentation.
Compound video presentation activator 700 demonstrates one way to expose the user to multiple encodings of a video. Other forms of compound video presentation activators include showing the presentation quality information for the available encodings in corresponding activators that appear as items listed in a combobox or menu. Alternatively the presentation quality information of each available encoding could be appear in individual buttons shown together, such as a group of push buttons or radio buttons.
Wireless communication interfaces 810 comprises RF communication circuitry and an antenna. The RF communication circuitry typically includes an amplifier, filter, RF modulator, and signal processing circuitry. Wireless communication interfaces 810 may also include a memory device, software, processing circuitry, or some other communication device. Wireless communication interfaces 810 use various protocols, such as CDMA, EVDO, WIMAX, GSM, LTE, Wi-Fi, HSPA, Bluetooth, 1xRTT or some other wireless communication format.
User interface 820 comprises components that interact with a user to receive user inputs and to present media and/or information. User interface 820 includes display screen 830 and may also include a speaker, microphone, buttons, lights, touch screen, touch pad, scroll wheel, communication port, or some other user input/output apparatus—including combinations thereof.
Processing circuitry 845 comprises microprocessor and other circuitry that retrieves and executes operating software 860 from storage system 850. Storage system 850 comprises a non-transitory storage medium, such as a disk drive, flash drive, data storage circuitry, or some other memory apparatus. Processing circuitry 845 is typically mounted on a circuit board that may also hold storage system 850 and portions of communication interfaces 810 and user interface 820. Operating software 860 comprises computer programs, firmware, or some other form of machine-readable processing instructions. Operating software 860 includes presentation quality logic 870, which is an implementation of the states and operations illustrated in
The implementation of presentation quality logic 870 may be an aggregation of modules such as those shown in
The above description and associated figures teach the best mode of the invention. The following claims specify the scope of the invention. Note that some aspects of the best mode may not fall within the scope of the invention as specified by the claims. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the features described above can be combined in various ways to form multiple variations of the invention. As a result, the invention is not limited to the specific embodiments described above, but only by the following claims and their equivalents.
