Verizon Digital Media Services Inc.

Edgecast Networks, Inc.

Seungyeob Choi

Robert J Peters

Karthik Sathyanarayana

Alexander A Kazerani

Ravikiran Patil

Jonathan DiVincenzo

Eric Dyoniziak

Lior Elazary

Provided is an intelligent prefetcher for prefetching media content segments following a non-sequential naming convention. The prefetching is initiated in response to a server receiving a user request for a particular segment that is not cached. The server passes the request to an origin. The origin scans metadata of a file from which the particular segment is produced. The scanning identifies time or frame offsets for subsequent segments to be prefetched. The origin constructs the requested segment and includes in the segment header, identifiers corresponding to the offset of each subsequent segment selected for prefetching. The segment passes to the server. The server detects the modified header and generates prefetch requests based on each identifier in the modified header. The server issues the prefetch request to the origin and caches the prefetched segments returned by the origin for distribution in response to subsequent user requests for the prefetched segments.

Prefetching with a dynamic cloud packager

Server assisted live stream failover involves detecting a manifest of a stream provided by a first source exceeding a staleness quotient before the stream ends, and initiating or triggering failover of the stream from the first source to a second source in response to detecting the stale manifest. A server initiates the failover on behalf of a client, wherein the client requests objects (i.e., manifests and segments) of the stream, the server distributes those objects from at least the first source to the client, and the server detects that a particular requested object has become stale past a staleness quotient. The server indirectly redirects a client from a first source to a second source by passing a message with a 4xx or 5xx code to the client in place of a message with a 3xx code provided by the first source.

Server assisted live stream failover

An encodingless transmuxer produces a manifest file and segments for streaming media content over different streaming protocols without encoding or otherwise modifying the binary data from the original encoding of the media content file. The transmuxer detects key frame positions from the media content file metadata. The transmuxer maps segment start times to a subset of the identified key frames based on a segment duration parameter. The transmuxer generates a manifest file listing the segments with each segment identifier comprising a timestamp specifying a time offset for the key frame at which the segment commences. In response to a request for a particular segment, the transmuxer or a streaming server copies or reuses from the original media content file, the binary data for the key frame that commences the particular segment up to the bit immediately before the start of the next segment key frame.

Encodingless transmuxing

Some embodiments provide intelligent predictive stream caching for live, linear, or video-on-demand streaming content using prefetching, segmented caching, and request clustering. Prefetching involves retrieving streaming content segments from an origin server prior to the segments being requested by users. Prefetching live or linear streaming content segments involves continually reissuing requests to the origin until the segments are obtained or a preset retry duration is completed. Prefetching is initiated in response to a first request for a segment falling within a particular interval. Request clustering commences thereafter. Subsequent requests are queued until the segments are retrieved. Segmented caching involves caching segments for one particular interval. Segments falling within a next interval are not prefetched until a first request for one such segment in the next interval is received. Cached segments from the previous interval can be replaced in cache with segments for the current interval, thereby minimizing cache footprint utilization.

Intelligent predictive stream caching

Some embodiments provide a scalable content streaming system that performs server-side archiving. The content streaming system includes a set of streaming server clusters, a remote storage server, and a set of distributed servers. Each streaming server cluster includes at least one streaming server and a local storage server. Each streaming server of a particular cluster distributes a content stream that is uploaded to the streaming server while also recording the content stream to the local storage server of that particular cluster. The remote storage server stores files from the local storage servers that are transferred when recording to those files is complete. The set of distributed servers distribute a live stream of content from a particular streaming server when the content is being uploaded to the particular streaming server and distribute a recorded stream of the content from the remote storage server when the upload is complete.

Scalable content streaming system with server-side archiving

Some embodiments provide a reporting system for improved granular real-time performance statistics reporting in a distributed platform. The reporting system includes a statistic server and a portal. The statistics server is communicably coupled to servers of the distributed platform that produce statistical data related to the distribution of content and execution of services for different customers. The statistics server aggregates the statistical data from the plurality of servers in an optimized staggered manner during a recurring interval. This reduces the amount of statistical data that is passed at any particular instance in time from the servers the statistics servers. The statistics server incrementally updates a real-time performance report for a particular customer as the statistical data is aggregated for the particular customer so that the computational and memory overhead for deriving the performance report in real-time is reduce. The portal then presents the performance report to the particular customer.

Growing community of inventors

Northridge, CA, United States of America

Seungyeob Choi