Seamless media adaptation with simultaneous processing chains

In this paper we investigate a seamless method for the adaptation of streamed media by using simultaneous processing chains. The common approach for media adaptation is to deconstruct the current media processing chain and to construct a new media chain afterwards. As a consequence, media frames might be lost and the adaptation cycle needs significant time. In our approach, the new processing chain is built in parallel to the current one and the stream is switched to the new chain as soon as possible. With this mechanism, we can guarantee zero-loss behaviour in the sender, and at the same time, reduce the overall adaptation time significantly. The proposed method is independent of the actual codec and can be applied to both audio and video streams. We present a formal calculation of the possible improvements of our proposed mechanism with respect to information loss and adaptation speed and also report about results obtained in our implementation using the Java Media Framework.