EDGE OPTIMIZED TRANSRATING SYSTEM

摘要

A system and method for bandwidth management by controlling the bit rate of a signal stream in real time according to available link bandwidth. Applications include multiple-channel video data streams over a limited-bandwidth link such as a Digital Subscriber Line. A video signal is transrated at the head end to multiple streams having different bit rates, by a multirating device which sends the multiple streams over a network, along with metadata containing information about the data structure and parameters of the streams. At the network access edge, a demultirating device uses the metadata to select the stream with the highest video quality whose bit rate does not exceed the available bandwidth of the end-user's access link. This scheme provides multiple unicast signals to different end-users in place of a single multicast signal, supports multiple high-definition channels over a limited bandwidth link, and is compatible with standard encryption methods.

主权项

1. A system for carrying video data from a video source to a video display over first and second networks, the first network is a packet-based network, the system comprising:
a first device connectable between the video source and the first network for receiving a first video stream in a data format from the video source, the first device comprises a multirater or a transrater for translating the first video stream to one or more second video stream having a lower bit rate and the data format, the first device operative for transmitting the first and second video streams to the first network; a second device connectable between the first network and the second network for receiving the video streams from the first network, for selecting one of the first and the second video stream, and for transmitting the selected video stream to the second network; and a third device connectable between the second network and the video display for receiving the selected video stream from the second network and for transmitting the selected video stream to the video displayed to be displayed thereon.