Synchronized multicast media streaming employing server-client coordinated adaptive playout and error control

Abstract

A new inter-client synchronization framework employing a server-client coordinated adaptive playout and error control toward one-to-many (i.e., multicast) media streaming is discussed in this paper. The proposed adaptive playout mechanism controls the playout speed of audio and video by adopting the time-scale modification of audio. Based on the overall synchronization status as well as the buffer occupancy level, the playout speed of each client is manipulated within a perceptually tolerable range. By coordinating the playout speed of each client, the inter-client synchronization with respect to the target presentation time is smoothly achieved. Furthermore, RTCP-compatible signaling between the server and group-clients is performed to achieve the inter-client synchronization and error recovery, where the exchange of controlling message is restricted. Simulation results show the performance of the proposed multicast media streaming framework.