Transforming video manifests to enable efficient media distribution

Abstract

A system comprising: a plurality of mobile edge caches integrated within a corresponding plurality of mobile environments; a local network manager coupled to each edge cache device in each mobile environment to provide network connectivity to client devices within each mobile environment, a mobile high speed network interface coupled to each mobile edge cache within each mobile environment to establish a high bandwidth link to one or more fixed high speed network interfaces when the mobile environment is within range; a fixed core cache coupled to each fixed high speed network interface, the fixed core cache to cache content titles to be distributed to the plurality of mobile edge caches, wherein each content title includes a manifest indicating different stream rates at which the content title is encoded; a mobile lower speed network interface coupled to each mobile edge cache to maintain a lower bandwidth link when the mobile environment is not within range of the one or more fixed high speed network interfaces; a content distribution optimizer to read an original manifest for a first content title and responsively generate a modified manifest by removing indications of one or more of the highest stream rates included in the original manifest; wherein responsive to the mobile environment being out of range of the fixed high speed network interfaces, the content distribution optimizer to provide the modified manifest to a content streaming app of a client device in the mobile environment responsive to a request by the mobile streaming app for the first content title.