Evaluation of Distribution of Panoramic Video Sequences in the eXplorative Television Project

Abstract

In this paper, a scalable solution is presented for distributing panoramic video sequences to multiple viewers at high resolution and quality levels. In contrast to traditional broadcast scenarios, panoramic video enables the content consumer to manipulate the camera view direction and viewport size. By segmenting the panoramic input video into a set of separate sequences, transporting them over standard delivery channels and recombining them at end user side, bandwidth utilization is optimized and the quality of the video that is visualized is increased. The proposed solution, called the segmentation approach, is thoroughly explained and evaluated versus a single-stream solution with regards to several metrics, including bandwidth utilization, encoding speed, objective quality levels and seeking performance.