Efficient bitstream switching for streaming of H.264/AVC coded video

In this article, a novel scheme is proposed for switching among multiple bitrate video streams over Internet, to achieve best quality of service (QoS). The research is focused on selecting the best switching points inside the pre-coded variable bit rate video streams, to facilitate bandwidth scalability among the non-scalable multiple bitstreams. With a stepwise monotonically decreasing (downstairs) bandwidth reservation scheme, it is shown that if switching occurs at the transition points in the "downstairs", then the best QoS can be achieved. However, insertion of switching pictures at these transition points may change the characteristics of the "downstairs" function and hence the bandwidth requirement. Here, we propose a scheme for proper management of the allocated resources to facilitate the stream switching in the "downstairs" through SP-frames. The performance is measured in terms of the wastage of bits in the receiver buffer and bandwidth utilization at the switching instances.