Methods and systems are provided for adjusting a size of a buffer based on a probability that a rewind request will be received during a currently playing segment of media. When the system determines that receiving a rewind request is likely, the system will increase the size of a buffer such that the rewind request can be accommodated using data from the buffer. When the system determines that receiving a rewind request is unlikely, the system will decrease the size of the buffer to free resources for other system components.

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 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.

Communications from a content server to an end device via a proxy device are controlled. The content server and the proxy device are connected by a first link using a streaming control protocol. The proxy device also has a connection to the end device over a second link. The method includes obtaining information about a context of the end device. The method further includes determining where a decision should be made about controlling transmissions from the content server over the first link, based on the information about the context of the end device. The method further includes controlling transmissions from the content server over the first link, based on information relating to a Quality of Experience at the end device.

A method for processing an online video stream may include determining a transmission performance of a network for a queue of video frames, wherein each video frame in the queue may be associated with a priority level. The method may also include determining a maximum discarding level based on the transmission performance of the network. The method may further include removing a target video frame of which the associated priority level is lower than or equal to the maximum discarding level from the queue.

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.

Provided herein are various embodiments for synchronizing playback of audio and video. An embodiment operates by determining that a first quality video is being received at a media device. It is determined that a buffer of the media device is not large enough to buffer the first quality video long enough to synchronize an output of the high quality video with the output of the audio by one or more wireless speakers. A second quality of the video that the buffer can hold long enough to synchronize is identified, wherein the second quality of the video is lower than the first quality of the video. The media device outputs the video at the second quality and the corresponding audio to the one or more wireless speakers.

A video stream transmission control method includes that: in response to detecting that a receiving time interval of two adjacent received video frames in multiple received video frames is less than an interval threshold, theoretical receiving time of a next video frame sent by a video stream sending device corresponding to the each received video frame is determined; multiple theoretical receiving times corresponding to the multiple video stream sending devices are sorted, and expected receiving time of a next video frame sent by each video stream sending device of the multiple video stream sending devices is determined according to a sorting result and interval adjustment time; and the video frame sending time interval of the each video stream sending device is adjusted according to the expected receiving time and the theoretical receiving time corresponding to the each video stream sending device.

A system and method are provided of minimizing network bandwidth used from an external network by client peers in a local network. The method can include the operation of organizing a plurality of clients each having media streamlets and a client parent in a structure within the local network. Mapping information propagates through the structure. The mapping information represents local streamlet locations as stored by the plurality of clients. Another operation is retrieving a local streamlet from a client identified in the mapping information as having the local streamlet for the requesting client.