Consolidation of time-compressible time-offset media streams

摘要

Various methods, systems, and apparatuses can be used to consolidate unicast video streams into multicast video streams. In some implementations, a skewing window associated with multiple unicast video streams for a video can be identified using a maximum skewing rate and a program duration, and a multicast stream for the video can be generated based on the skewing window. The unicast video streams can then be skewed and merged with the multicast stream.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: identifying a skewing window associated with a plurality of unicast video streams based upon a skewing rate and a program duration associated with the unicast video streams, the plurality of unicast video streams being associated with the same piece of video content; generating one or more multicast streams based upon the skewing window; skewing the plurality of unicast video streams toward a respective one of the one or more multicast streams, thereby producing a plurality of skewed unicast video streams; merging the plurality of skewed unicast video streams into the respective one or more multicast video streams; determining whether a skewed unicast video stream from the plurality of skewed unicast video streams matches one of the one or more multicast video streams; wherein merging comprises merging the matching skewed unicast video stream into a matching multicast video stream; determining whether any skewed unicast video stream has not been merged with the one or more multicast video streams; responsive to the determination, continuing to skew the non-matching unicast video stream until all skewed unicast video streams from the plurality of skewed unicast video streams have been merged into the one or more multicast video streams.