EP1072129A1 - Memorisation et apport de donnees - Google Patents

Memorisation et apport de donnees

Info

Publication number
EP1072129A1
EP1072129A1 EP99918113A EP99918113A EP1072129A1 EP 1072129 A1 EP1072129 A1 EP 1072129A1 EP 99918113 A EP99918113 A EP 99918113A EP 99918113 A EP99918113 A EP 99918113A EP 1072129 A1 EP1072129 A1 EP 1072129A1
Authority
EP
European Patent Office
Prior art keywords
data
item
portions
server
client
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Withdrawn
Application number
EP99918113A
Other languages
German (de)
English (en)
Inventor
Ben Willis
David Owen Beaumont
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
British Telecommunications PLC
Original Assignee
British Telecommunications PLC
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by British Telecommunications PLC filed Critical British Telecommunications PLC
Priority to EP99918113A priority Critical patent/EP1072129A1/fr
Publication of EP1072129A1 publication Critical patent/EP1072129A1/fr
Withdrawn legal-status Critical Current

Links

Classifications

    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N21/00—Selective content distribution, e.g. interactive television or video on demand [VOD]
    • H04N21/20—Servers specifically adapted for the distribution of content, e.g. VOD servers; Operations thereof
    • H04N21/21—Server components or server architectures
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N21/00—Selective content distribution, e.g. interactive television or video on demand [VOD]
    • H04N21/20—Servers specifically adapted for the distribution of content, e.g. VOD servers; Operations thereof
    • H04N21/23—Processing of content or additional data; Elementary server operations; Server middleware
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N21/00—Selective content distribution, e.g. interactive television or video on demand [VOD]
    • H04N21/60—Network structure or processes for video distribution between server and client or between remote clients; Control signalling between clients, server and network components; Transmission of management data between server and client, e.g. sending from server to client commands for recording incoming content stream; Communication details between server and client 
    • H04N21/63—Control signaling related to video distribution between client, server and network components; Network processes for video distribution between server and clients or between remote clients, e.g. transmitting basic layer and enhancement layers over different transmission paths, setting up a peer-to-peer communication via Internet between remote STB's; Communication protocols; Addressing
    • H04N21/637—Control signals issued by the client directed to the server or network components
    • H04N21/6377—Control signals issued by the client directed to the server or network components directed to server
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N21/00—Selective content distribution, e.g. interactive television or video on demand [VOD]
    • H04N21/60—Network structure or processes for video distribution between server and client or between remote clients; Control signalling between clients, server and network components; Transmission of management data between server and client, e.g. sending from server to client commands for recording incoming content stream; Communication details between server and client 
    • H04N21/65—Transmission of management data between client and server
    • H04N21/658—Transmission by the client directed to the server
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N7/00—Television systems
    • H04N7/16—Analogue secrecy systems; Analogue subscription systems
    • H04N7/173—Analogue secrecy systems; Analogue subscription systems with two-way working, e.g. subscriber sending a programme selection signal
    • H04N7/17309—Transmission or handling of upstream communications
    • H04N7/17336—Handling of requests in head-ends

Definitions

  • This invention relates to a method of storing data in a computer file system, a method of supplying data from a server associated with a computer file system through a network to a client, and a server for supplying data.
  • a customer accessing information on a server wants the best possible quality of service (QoS) from the access network and end-system client being used.
  • QoS quality of service
  • bandwidth is one of the most significant in most applications
  • the clients may be connected to the server over connections using a wide variety of different access technologies, each of which has its own set of performance measures.
  • the main aspect of a connection which is relevant to the transmission of a media signal is the data bandwidth that it offers. For example, customers on high bandwidth connections, such as Ethernet, may be able to watch the content as its creator intended it to look.
  • a frame dropping technique is disclosed in European patent application EP 0 739 140 A, applicant Sun Microsystems Inc, for an 'Encoder for an end-to-end scalable video delivery system'.
  • the encoder utilizes a scalable compression algorithm based upon Laplacian pyramid decomposition.
  • a single bitstream comprising a base layer and first and second enhancement layers may be transmitted over heterogenous networks than can range from telephone lines to wireless transmission. It is disclosed that packets within this bitstream are preferably prioritized such that upon encountering a low bandwidth link or network congestion, the bitstream may be rescaled by dropping less important bits.
  • video may be delivered at a range of bandwidths.
  • the quality of the video will vary accordingly, i.e. compared to a sufficiently high bandwidth at which the video may be transmitted in toto, lower bandwidths, whilst still delivering the video, will do so with commensurately reduced quality
  • the server software prioritizes audio over video such that, as long as the network can support the lower audio bit rate, pristine audio is transmitted, with the higher bandwidth video being transmitted at whatever frame rate can be managed by the network
  • a so-called Coloured Index Sequential File is introduced, associating multimedia records with a given colour index. Upon network congestion, a scaling back of the multimedia flow may take place.
  • a method of supplying data from a server through a network to a client said server being associated with a computer file system, said method comprising the following steps performed by the server: receiving a request from the client for an item of data; retrieving the requested item of data and associated allocated flags from the computer file system, the item of data comprising individual portions of data, an allocating party having been permitted to choose a rank indicating relative importance for allocation to each respective individual portion and a flag having been allocated to each such portion indicating its allocated rank; measuring the bandwidth available for transmission of data from the server through the network to the client; with the individual portions ranked in accordance with their relative importance, identifying the portion or portions which can be transmitted to the client within the available bandwidth; and transmitting the identified portion or portions to the client.
  • the method according to the invention advantageously allows the sending of only selected portions of the item of data. Those selected portions that are sent will be sent without the cutting back of quality associated with the methods of reacting to bandwidth scarcity according to the prior art.
  • the item of data has the form of a series of frames of data wherein the identifying of the portion or portions is carried out on the basis of delineation in terms of such frames.
  • chosen portions of the item of data may advantageously be delineated in terms of such frames, for example, a start frame address and an end frame address.
  • At least one identified portion comprises a single frame.
  • single frames may be chosen out of a frame constituted datastream for particular prioritization in the ranking process.
  • retrieving the requested item of data and associated allocated flags from the computer file system comprises retrieving separate data and flag files from the computer file system.
  • the data storing process operates in transparent fashion having regard to the item of data.
  • a method of storing an item of data in a computer file system comprising the steps of: dividing the item of data into a series of individual portions; permitting an allocating party to choose a rank indicating relative importance for allocation to each respective individual portion; allocating a flag to each such portion indicating its allocated rank; and storing the data and the allocated flags in the computer file system.
  • a server for supplying a requested item of data through a network to a client, said server comprising: receiving means for receiving a request from a client for an item of data; retrieving means for retrieving the requested item of data and associated allocated flags from a computer file system, the item of data comprising individual portions of data, an allocating party having been permitted to choose a rank indicating relative importance for allocation to each respective individual portion and a flag having been allocated to each such portion indicating its allocated rank; bandwidth measuring means for measuring the bandwidth available for transmission of data from the server through a network to a client; identifying means for identifying in an item of data with individual portions ranked in accordance with their relative importance the portion or portions of the item of data which can be transmitted within the available bandwidth as measured by the bandwidth measuring means; and means for transmitting the identified portion or portions of the item of data to a client.
  • Figure 1 shows a complete end-to-end network based system incorporating the invention
  • Figure 2 is a flow chart of the operations performed in the system of Figure 1 when storing an item of data
  • Figure 3 is a functional block diagram of the components of the server shown in Figure 1 and associated database which are used when supplying an item of data to a client
  • FIG. 1 there is shown an end-to-end network based system for storage of and supplying items of data such as multimedia data or video data.
  • data is also known as content
  • the system comprises a server 2 for storing items of data (or content) in a database 10 and supplying items of data retrieved from the database 1 0, a plurality of terminals 4 acting as clients providing a user interface to the server 2 and an access network 6 for providing communications links between the terminals 4 and the server 2.
  • 'database' is merely as one example of a computer file storage system such that items of data may be stored and retrieved.
  • these items of data may be stored in a database or other computer file storage system hosted on the server computer itself
  • the access network 6 may be any network, for example, an ATM network, a LAN (Ethernet) network, a mobile network, an ISDN dial-up network or a PSTN dial-up network There are therefore a large range of data rates possible between the server 2 and the terminals 4 and therefore a wide choice of quality is available to the user
  • the quality of the video provided over a low bandwidth link might well prove to be unacceptable.
  • the content creator might well prefer to be able to send a high quality still frame from the video of the new car. In this way, the new car could still be presented to the browsing public with the degree of quality required by the content creator
  • the invention provides for a guarantee of the delivery of such high importance information contained in an item of data in the presence of bandwidth constraints.
  • FIG. 2 shows a flow diagram illustrating the coding of an item of source data in accordance with this invention
  • a step 202 an item of data is received by the server 2
  • the item of data might typically take the form of a data stream but it will be appreciated that the item of data could take other forms, for example a simple image file.
  • the data may be transmitted to the server 2 over the network 6 or it may be supplied to the server 2 on a storage medium such as a floppy disk.
  • the data stream may be a video data stream encoded according to the MPEG 1 standard. Alternatively, it may be a multimedia data stream, representing a mixture of types of media, such as audio, video, image or text, or it may be a data stream representing a single media other than video.
  • the data stream is typically generated in a way that permits specific frames or a sequence of frames to be selected by a user. It will be appreciated however, that such datastreams may be delineated into portions other than on a frame-by-frame basis, for example, delineating an audio stream into time-based portions.
  • the data stream is divided into a series of individual portions. This division will be performed on the basis of the differing content represented in different parts of the datastream.
  • a video datastream might depict a promotional video for a new car, different portions of which depict the car, for example, from different angles, or performing in different circumstances.
  • Each portion is defined by a start frame and end frame
  • the individual portions are ranked in accordance with the relative importance of their information content.
  • An allocating party such as, for example, the content creator or owner, will choose such ranks for allocation to the respective portions.
  • the criteria of deciding how to rank the individual portions according to the relative importance of their information content is defined by the party performing the ranking. This party might, for example, be the content creator or the content owner
  • An artistically pleasing image of an object might be ranked more highly than an artistically poor image of an object.
  • a particularly appealing image of an object for sale might be ranked more highly than a video sequence showing the product in use. One image from such a video sequence might be particularly preferred.
  • a flag is allocated to each individual portion indicating the relative importance of its content.
  • the items of data and the flags are stored in the database 10. Typically, an item of data and the file containing the associated flags will be stored as separate files. In this way an item of data remains independent from its associated flag file.
  • Steps 204, 206 and 208 may be done manually or by an automated process performed by the server 2 under the control of a software program, for example using image searching techniques to find predefined important portions of the data stream.
  • An example of suitable software which can be used in performing steps 204, 206 and 208 is the image software available from, for example, the Virage Corporation linked into a database management system available from, for example, the Informix Corporation.
  • Each flag represents metadata related to the respective data portion.
  • the metadata is then stored in a file together with identifiers (for example, start frame and end frame) of the individual portion associated with the metadata.
  • identifiers for example, start frame and end frame
  • Level 1 indicates that the identified portion of the source data is of the highest level of importance
  • level 2 is the next in importance
  • level 3 is of the lowest importance.
  • the server 2 measures the bandwidth of the connection The bandwidth is also measured dynamically during transmission of data. The bandwidth is used to determine which levels of data are to be transmitted to the terminal 4.
  • this hierarchy of content on the basis of an associated priority level correlates with a determination of an acceptable content download time This is to say, using the simple example outlined above, that with a high available bandwidth, where data portions tagged with all three levels of priority will be sent, a promotional video of a new car might be sent in its entirety, whereas with a low bandwidth link, a still frame from the video might instead be sent, in order that a high quality presentation of the car in some form is still made in a time acceptable to the downloading user.
  • FIG. 3 there are shown the functional components of a server 2 which are used to supply data to one of the terminals 4. These components comprise a broker 8, a data streamer 204, a frame-dropping filter
  • the other filters 210 may, for example, comprise a frequency filter, a colour reduction filter and a colour-to- monochrome filter.
  • the data streamer 204 retrieves the data from the database 10.
  • the data may be coded, for example, MPEG coded. As coded data passes through the server 2, it is not decoded.
  • the data stream After leaving the data streamer 204, the data stream passes through the frame-dropping filter 206 and, optionally, through the other filters 210.
  • the data stream Before leaving the server 2, the data stream is wrapped in an appropriate protocol to provide an output signal. The output signal is transmitted through the network 6 to the client terminal 4 It will be appreciated that this output signal might be such as to stream the remaining portions of the item of data to the client or the remaining portions might be downloaded to the client for buffered viewing.
  • the bandwidth measurer 202 measures the currently available bandwidth of the connection between the server 2 and the terminal 4.
  • a variety of techniques for the measurement of such currently available bandwidth between, for example, a server and a client will be well known.
  • One such simple example is the mere counting of the number of bytes passing through a buffer in a particular period of time
  • More sophisticated techniques might utilize traffic monitoring software and Remote network Monitoring (RMON) probes. So-called RMON I and II probes will be familiar both as industry standards and as the subjects of a number of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Requests for Comments (RFCs) .
  • the bandwidth measurer 202 informs the broker 8 of the value of the available bandwidth.
  • the broker 8 retrieves the metadata or flags for the requested item of data. Using the metadata and the value for the available bandwidth, the broker 8 decides which portions of data based on their levels of importance are to be discarded to meet the conditions having regard to the available bandwidth. It will be appreciated that there may also exist other factors of network state, for example network delay, or client capabilities, for example, display resolution or colour depth, which might also have a bearing on these conditions for discarding data. Thus, with the individual portions of the requested item of data ranked by the levels of importance of their information content, the broker 8 decides on the dividing line between the portions which can be transmitted and the portions which are to be discarded. For example, with portions of data ranked into three levels of importance, the broker 8 might decide that only portions of the highest level of importance can be transmitted.
  • the broker 8 informs the frame-dropping filter 206 of the start and end frame numbers of each portion which is to be discarded. Frame-dropping filter 206 removes these portions from the data stream which it receives from the data streamer 204. The broker 8 also decides whether further filtering is required. If further filtering is required the broker 8 instructs the other filters 210 to apply such filtering.
  • the bandwidth of the output signal can be controlled while maintaining the quality of the data received by the user of the terminal 4. In this way, whilst the user may only receive portions of the work authored by the content creator, these portions should be of a quality with which the content creator or owner will be pleased to present the subject of the content to the world at large.

Landscapes

  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Multimedia (AREA)
  • Signal Processing (AREA)
  • Data Exchanges In Wide-Area Networks (AREA)

Abstract

L'invention concerne un serveur capable de mémoriser des éléments de données dans un système de fichiers informatiques et de fournir des éléments de données, sur demande, via un réseau à des clients sous forme de terminaux. Lors de la mémorisation d'un élément de données, les données sont divisées en parties individuelles et une partie d'affectation est autorisée à choisir un ordre d'indication selon l'importance de chaque partie en vue d'une affectation, un indicateur est alors affecté aux données. Lorsqu'un élément de données est fourni, la largeur de bande disponible de la connexion vers le terminal est mesurée et les parties individuelles de données de moindre importance sont écartées de manière que les données soient transmises dans la largeur de bande disponible.
EP99918113A 1998-04-20 1999-04-20 Memorisation et apport de donnees Withdrawn EP1072129A1 (fr)

Priority Applications (1)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
EP99918113A EP1072129A1 (fr) 1998-04-20 1999-04-20 Memorisation et apport de donnees

Applications Claiming Priority (4)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
EP98303022 1998-04-20
EP98303022A EP0952709A1 (fr) 1998-04-20 1998-04-20 Système à stockage et transmission de données
EP99918113A EP1072129A1 (fr) 1998-04-20 1999-04-20 Memorisation et apport de donnees
PCT/GB1999/001197 WO1999055046A1 (fr) 1998-04-20 1999-04-20 Memorisation et apport de donnees

Publications (1)

Publication Number Publication Date
EP1072129A1 true EP1072129A1 (fr) 2001-01-31

Family

ID=8234780

Family Applications (2)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
EP98303022A Withdrawn EP0952709A1 (fr) 1998-04-20 1998-04-20 Système à stockage et transmission de données
EP99918113A Withdrawn EP1072129A1 (fr) 1998-04-20 1999-04-20 Memorisation et apport de donnees

Family Applications Before (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
EP98303022A Withdrawn EP0952709A1 (fr) 1998-04-20 1998-04-20 Système à stockage et transmission de données

Country Status (2)

Country Link
EP (2) EP0952709A1 (fr)
WO (1) WO1999055046A1 (fr)

Families Citing this family (5)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US6718311B1 (en) * 1998-11-16 2004-04-06 Sprint Enterprises Inc. Variance alerting dispenser system and variance detector apparatus and method
US7958532B2 (en) * 2001-06-18 2011-06-07 At&T Intellectual Property Ii, L.P. Method of transmitting layered video-coded information
JP4265245B2 (ja) 2003-03-17 2009-05-20 株式会社日立製作所 計算機システム
WO2009104153A1 (fr) * 2008-02-20 2009-08-27 Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. Procédé et dispositif pour transférer des flux vidéo sur un réseau
US9578333B2 (en) 2013-03-15 2017-02-21 Qualcomm Incorporated Method for decreasing the bit rate needed to transmit videos over a network by dropping video frames

Family Cites Families (2)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP0786180A4 (fr) * 1994-09-08 2001-05-16 Virtex Communications Inc Procede et dispositif de distribution electronique d'informations numeriques multimedias
US5621660A (en) * 1995-04-18 1997-04-15 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Software-based encoder for a software-implemented end-to-end scalable video delivery system

Non-Patent Citations (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Title
See references of WO9955046A1 *

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
EP0952709A1 (fr) 1999-10-27
WO1999055046A1 (fr) 1999-10-28

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