Demand for mobile video has exploded. As the thirst for multimedia access from anywhere at anytime continues to grow, so has the availability of TV-anywhere services. This has been a boon for service providers, eager to add new consumer applications to their portfolios.
But it also has created a huge challenge for the supporting infrastructure equipment, not to mention a potential conundrum: the performance required to process video from the media gateways must be tempered with low power that will not over-tax the infrastructure but still provide cost containment and sustainability.
Advances in video transcoding implementations from new, alternative processors and the streaming architectures that support video—some of which can yield a real power/density gain of a factor of 15 over processor technology typically used in today’s infrastructure equipment—can be part of the solution to ensure high-performance, low-power platforms for mobile video.
Growth in Mobile Video & TV-Anywhere Services
Some estimates suggest that 1 billion YouTube channels were streamed per day in the second half of 2009. That’s up from 600 million in 2008. Looking forward, reports from Intel purport that by 2015, as many as 12 billion devices (TVs, desktops, laptops, netbooks and smart phones) will be connected to 500 billion hours of available video.
By 2013, 400 million mobile video phones will in the hands of consumers, according to Infonetics. Cisco expects 90% of all Internet traffic to be video in 2012 and 70% of all mobile traffic to be video in 2013. Clearly, the tremendous demand is growing by the day for widely and easily accessible video.
To meet this demand and to maintain ease of accessibility, the servers, video streamers, and media gateways that process and deliver all of this video content now have to grapple with an exponential increase in processing work load. Video requires an order of magnitude more processing power, especially when it’s being delivered to multiple types of viewing client devices, compared to voice signals and typical Internet content. Every increase in processing power, of course, increases power consumption.
Video transcoding represents the bulk of this processing load. Combined with the growth described, it represents a large latent increase in energy demand that could put pressure on existing infrastructures.
The Need for Video Transcoding
The video being distributed originates from a wide range of capture devices with very different resolutions and encoding capabilities. For example, the capture devices could range from a Common Intermediate Format (CIF) resolution smart-phone encoding MPEG4 to a 720p resolution camcorder encoding H.264.
Similarly, the client devices receiving the video demonstrate a wide range of decoding capabilities (in terms of dedicated video functionality or available processor cycles), such as a Quarter CIF (QCIF) resolution H.263-capable cell phone or a high-spec laptop PC capable of decoding high-definition H.264.
As video is submitted to the network for live viewing and/or storage, it is done so with the expectation that anyone can view it, yet no rigid or common video exchange standards exist. To meet this expectation, video distribution and network service providers have to provide transparent transcoding functionality (Fig. 1).
Also, the growing expectation is for video delivered in real time without the need to first wait to download some or all of it into buffers on the client device, especially for Internet TV and surveillance systems. This demand for real-time delivery further increases the processing load in the video delivery systems and compounds the growth in energy demand.
Transcoding/Streaming Platform Architectures
Historically, voice transcoding equipment has been located close to the core of the network and was commonly implemented using dedicated DSP-based hardware. The same, however, is not true for video transcoding.
Typically, the equipment used to transcode and stream live video is based on standard server platforms, especially when it’s located close to the video storage locations. This is primarily due to the fact that a large percentage of video delivery services is Internet-based, even though most viewing clients are mobile.
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