Evaluating qualitative streaming experience using session performance metadata

Abstract

A technique for evaluating qualitative streaming experience using session performance metadata is disclosed herein. A pipeline of a streaming service can be adapted to collect metadata, such as timestamps, from various components of the pipeline. The metadata can then be analyzed to calculate an objective quality metric for each streaming session using weighted scores derived from the metadata for a plurality of different components including, but not limited to, stutter, latency, and/or picture quality. The quality metric is designed to have high correlation with subjective measures of quality by users of the streaming service, but provides dense data samples compared to typical sparse responses collected from user feedback (e.g., user surveys). The objective quality metric can be utilized to quickly adjust, either manually or automatically, the streaming service parameters to improve the quality of the streaming service due to changes in, e.g., streaming content.