HEVC tile based streaming to head mounted displays
Robert Skupin, Yago Sánchez, Dimitri Podborski, Cornelius Hellge, Thomas Schierl · 2017
360° video streaming to clients using Virtual Reality head mounted displays is a challenge for traditional video delivery. As transmission of the complete content in a desirable quality sacrifices a large fraction of available client and network resources, adaptivity to the user viewport promises substantial benefits. An efficient way to achieve viewport adaptive streaming without per-user or per-orientation encoding, i.e. essentially transcoding, is to make use of motion-constrained HEVC tiles. DASH can be used for tiled streaming, where tiled content resides on the server at multiple resolutions. The DASH client selects the resolutions of each tile according to the current viewport. This demonstration paper presents an agile and responsive streaming prototype system for 360° video content. In order to achieve acceptable responsiveness, the DASH client relies on small buffer sizes and shifted random access points across tiles when suitable.