Described is a method of media content delivery, where measurements of network delivery rates are used to determine at which bit rate to request each content segment. The aim is to ensure continuous play-out of good quality segments, without relying on a large buffer, so that end-to-end delay is kept low. The historical network delivery rate is measured on two or more timescales, such as a short-term delivery rate and a long-term delivery rate, and these are used to decide when to request a higher bit rate segment than the previous segment, and when to request a lower bit rate segment than the previous segment.

A network management system may allocate different amounts of bandwidth to different types of data traffic. The traffic types may be distinguished by their source device address, and whether the source device is part of, or external to, a first network. Packets may also be marked by their sender with information to identify a traffic type, and the marking may be used to determine the packet's treatment. The allocations given to the various types of traffic may be dynamically modified with changing traffic demands and conditions.

Methods and systems are disclosed for providing video content in response to requests in a content delivery system with more speed and efficiency. In some aspects, network monitoring devices may gather content specific and network performance metrics, from user devices and content delivery components, to provide input to a computing device for deciding whether to store or delete different versions of the same or different items of content. The decision may be based on a policy which may include a weighted score based on a combination of usage and network efficiency scores. In other aspects, methods and systems are provided to initially provide to a user device a stored version of a content item, and then switch, as needed, to a different version of the content item using on-demand transcoding.

Systems and methods for dynamically multiplexing requested linear media channels and network data on forward link traffic streams of a communication link to a craft media delivery system are provided. Furthermore, systems and methods for receiving dynamically multiplexed requested linear media channels and network data on forward link traffic streams of a communication link by a craft media delivery system are also provided.

Techniques are disclosed relating to encoding recorded content for distribution to other computing devices. In some embodiments, a first computing device creates recorded content for transmission to a second computing device configured to present the recorded content. To encode the recorded content, the first computing device detects, via a network interface of the first computing device, one or more computing nodes available to encode the recorded content in one or more formats supported by the second computing device. The first computing device offloads the recorded content via the network interface to the one or more computing nodes for encoding in the one or more formats. In some embodiments, the second computing device receives a request from a user to stream content recorded by a first computing device and requests the content in a first format being encoded by a computing node assisting the first computing device.

An apparatus, system, and method for maintaining a programming lineup of adaptive-bitrate content streaming is provided. The apparatus includes a timeline module configured to maintain a programming lineup of media content available over a network. The media content may comprise a plurality of streamlets. The apparatus also includes at least one data module configured to maintain multi-bitrate streamlet information. The system includes the apparatus and a client module configured to acquire content based upon the programming lineup provided by the timeline module. The method includes maintaining a programming lineup of media content available over a network, and maintaining multi-bitrate streamlet information.

A method for managing zapping from a first digital content to a second digital content is disclosed. The first and second digital contents are obtained by HTTP adaptive streaming by a multimedia stream reader terminal and are each associated with a description file comprising a list of time segments of the content, each time segment being associated with multiple encoding rates of the content. The zapping management method involves: receiving a request to zap from the first digital content to the second digital content; obtaining the description file of the second digital content; selecting a rate for encoding a first time segment of the second digital content to be downloaded, on the basis of a resource constraint obtained by the multimedia stream reader terminal and on the basis of a target zapping time; and downloading the first time segment of the second digital content at the selected rate.

Disclosed are an audio and video data processing method, a live streaming apparatus, an electronic device, and a storage medium. A media stream is acquired, a difference value between a current media frame timestamp and a previous media frame timestamp in the media stream is acquired, and an upper and lower limit range of the difference value is acquired; the current media frame timestamp is output when the difference value is within the upper and lower limit range; a standard media frame interval of the media stream is acquired if the difference value is not within the upper and lower limit range. The problem of abnormal playback of a player caused by an inhomogeneous timestamp of an audio and video frame is solved. An accumulation error is also balanced through forward compensation and reverse compensation, so as to prevent the accumulation error from accumulating and increasing.

A system and method for real-time transmission of a panoramic video, which propose a new grouping method and bitrate decision method specifically for a panoramic 360-degree video. The grouping method takes into account fields of view of different users, thus effectively reducing the bandwidth consumption of repeated video segments, while ensuring user fairness and making full use of network bandwidth resources when allocating resources. The system and method of the invention can maximize the long-term QoE of users under the condition of limited bandwidth, and avoid the problem that the existing schemes are complex and difficult to meet real-time requirements of users.

Methods and systems for transmitting data are presented. Data received from at least one data source is retained in at least one buffer. In one example, initial hierarchical data may be provided from the at least one buffer to a device, followed by additional hierarchical data. In one example, the data is received into the at least one buffer via a multicast connection, and the data is provided to the device via a point-to-point connection.