Constrained fidelity adaptive bit rate encoding systems and methods

Abstract

This disclosure describes and adaptive bit rate encoding and distribution techniques for conserving bandwidth usage in a channel. The invention comprises, an encoder or transcoder, a video fragmenter, a video-quality analyzer that output complexity values, a streaming server, a process by which individual fragments are selected for distribution, a video-quality threshold, and, optionally a bandwidth reclamation factor. A video-quality analyzer inspects any combination of the input and output of the encoder, transcoder, or fragmenter, and produces a video-quality metric for each fragment. A fragment-selection process responds to request from a client device. If the video-quality value of the fragment requested exceeds the video-quality threshold, a different fragment having a lower vide-quality value is selected instead. Otherwise, the fragment that would have been selected is selected. In some embodiments, the video-quality threshold can be dynamically adjusted to permit varying amounts of bandwidth reclamation.