MPEG Video Streaming with VCR Functionality

With the proliferation of online multimedia content, the popularity of multimedia streaming technology, and the establishment of MPEG video coding standards, it is important to investigate how to efficiently implement an MPEG video streaming system. Digital video cassette recording (VCR) functionality (such as random access, fast forward, fast reverse, etc.) enables quick and user-friendly browsing of multimedia content, and thus is highly desirable in streaming video applications. The implementation of full VCR functionality, however, presents some technical challenges that have not yet been well resolved. In this paper, we investigate the impacts of the VCR functionality on the network traffic and the video decoder complexity. We propose a least-cost scheme for the efficient implementation of MPEG streaming video system to provide full VCR functionality over a network with minimum requirements on the network bandwidth and the decoder complexity. We also discuss our implementation of an IP-based MPEG-4 video streaming platform which provides full VCR functionality.