Design of VCR Functions With MPEG Characteristics for VOD based on Multicast

VOD(Video On Demand) that provides streaming service according to the user`s requirement in real time, consists of the video streaming server and the client system. Since it is very hard to apply the traditional server-client model that a server communicates with many clients through 1:1 connection to VOD system because it requires very high network bandwidth, many researches have been done to address this problem. Batching technique is one of VOD system based on Multicast that requires very small network bandwidth. However, the batching based VOD system has a limitation that it is very hard to provide VCR(Video Cassette Recorder) ability. In this paper, we propose a technique that reduces the required network bandwidth to provide VCR function by using the characteristic of MPEG, one of international video compression standard. In the proposed technique, a new video stream for VCR function is constructed with I pictures that is able to be decoded independently. The new video stream for VCR function is transmitted with the video stream for normal play together in Batching manner. The performance evaluation result shows that the proposed technique not only reduces the required network bandwidth and memory usage but also decreases the CPU usages.