Adaptive HTTP Streaming with Temporal Scalability in High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)

The newly approved High Efficiency Video Coding Standard (HEVC) includes temporal sub-layering feature, which provides temporal scalability. Two types of pictures - Temporal Sub-layer Access Pictures and Step-wise Temporal Sub-layer Access Pictures are provided for this purpose. This paper utilizes the temporal scalability in HEVC to provide bandwidth adaptive HTTP streaming. We describe our HTTP streaming algorithm, which is media timeline aware and which dynamically switches temporal sub-layers on the server side. We performed subjective tests to determine user perception regarding acceptable frame rates when using temporal scalability of HEVC. These results are used to control the algorithm's temporal switching behavior to provide a good quality of experience to the user. We applied Internet and 3GPP error-delay patterns to validate the performance of our algorithm.