Twitch Interactive, Inc.

Cyrus Hall

Abhinav Kapoor

Jorge Arturo Villatoro

Spencer Nelson

Yueshi Shen

Eran Ambar

Andrew Francis

Yuechuan Li

Shawn Hsu

Martin Hess

Jeffrey Garneau

Jyotindra Vasudeo

Chih-Chiang Lu

Daniel Lin

Matthew Louis Szatmary

Luke Curley

Scott Wang

Daniel Arthur McClain

Diana Lu

Phillip Conover

Scott Rabin

Maciej Laszcz

Techniques for low latency streaming, for example in a broadcasting environment, are described herein. In some examples, a playlist may include both currently encoded segments, which are segments that are fully encoded at or before playlist generation, and also future encoded segments, which are segments that have not yet been fully encoded at playlist generation. In some cases, the inclusion of future encoded segments in a playlist may result in a player requesting a segment that has not yet been fully encoded at the time that the request is received by the server. In some examples, even though the segment is not yet fully encoded, the server may nevertheless save and process the request, for example by transmitting encoded portions of the requested segment as those portions are made available by the encoder.

Streaming playlist including future encoded segments

Techniques for low latency streaming, for example in a broadcasting environment, are described herein. In some examples, one or more individual renditions may be encoded into multiple rendition versions associated with different respective latencies. Also, in some examples, one or more individual renditions may be encoded into multiple rendition versions having different respective amounts of forward error correction (FEC), for example by an edge node of a video streaming service. Also, in some examples, video may be broadcast using a protocol that does not require retransmission of lost packets, such as Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC), which is commonly used for point-to-point transmissions. Also, in some examples, one or more servers may receive quality of service feedback information from each player to which video content is transmitted. The one or more servers may use this feedback information to select and switch between appropriate renditions and rendition versions for each player.

Server-based encoded version selection

Requesting transmission of future encoded segments

Intra-rendition latency variation

First streaming video content may be received from a provider. The provider may issue a request to replace part of the first streaming video content with replacement content, such as advertisements. Second streaming video content may be selected as a replacement for a first video player, while third streaming video content may be selected as a replacement for a second video player. Instructions may be sent to the first and the second video player to play a first portion of the first streaming video content, followed by their respective selected replacement content, followed by a third portion of the first streaming video content, with the respective selected replacement content replacing a second portion of the first streaming video content. Replacement of the second portion of the first streaming video content may sometimes introduce latency, which may be reduced using various techniques.

Session-specific streaming content replacement

Forward error correction for low latency streaming

Provider-requested streaming content replacement

Latency reduction for streaming content replacement

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Cyrus Hall