Seamless and efficient stream switching of multi-perspective videos

According to Cisco study, mobile video already makes up 50% of mobile data traffic and is expected to reach 66% in 2015. Nowadays, the video watching experience is being made more interactive to enhance the user experience. One way that users can enjoy better watching experience is to be able to switch between different perspectives in one video. Such multi-perspective events require an efficient streaming scheme that is both cost-efficient and user-friendly. Based on three popular video streaming methods (RTP/RTSP, HTTP Progressive Download and DASH), we propose three different solutions for streaming multi-perspective videos. Architectures and principles of each solution are discussed and implemented on an Android-platform-based smartphone. To compare the performance of our solutions, we design a framework for evaluation. The metrics we use to evaluate our solutions include bandwidth consumption and Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, such as switch delay and switch rendering. Our comparison shows that all three solutions can achieve acceptable performance for perspective switching. However, the DASH-based solution outperforms the remaining solutions at it provides shortest delay and seamless switching of perspectives for a given bandwidth.