Determining Video Properties in Real-time Video Transcoding for Mobile Devices

Rapid development of mobile devices equipped with high-performance processors and high-speed data wireless communication modules has made mobile devices a major consumer of multimedia content today. Mobile YouTube now makes almost 40% of YouTube’s global watch time [1]. Current video streaming systems store multiple copies of video content pre-encoded to specific video properties which is not optimized for the device that is accessing it or other surrounding influences such as adverse network conditions or battery status of mobile device. This process requires huge storage resources and does not provide optimal Quality of Experience (QoE) for the user that is accessing the content. Using real-time video transcoding, video is encoded on request and can be optimized for the display of the device that is accessing the video, network conditions and battery status of the device. In this paper, the process of determining the appropriate video properties for certain conditions such as display size, battery status and network condition is presented.