Design and Evaluation of a Self-Learning HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming Client

Abstract

HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) is becoming the de facto standard for Over-The-Top (OTT)-based video streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix. By splitting a video into multiple segments of a couple of seconds and encoding each of these at multiple quality levels, HAS allows a video client to dynamically adapt the requested quality during the playout to react to network changes. However, state-of-the-art quality selection heuristics are deterministic and tailored to specific network configurations. Therefore, they are unable to cope with a vast range of highly dynamic network settings. In this letter, a novel Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based HAS client is presented and evaluated. The self-learning HAS client dynamically adapts its behaviour by interacting with the environment to optimize the Quality of Experience (QoE), the quality as perceived by the end-user. The proposed client has been thoroughly evaluated using a network-based simulator and is shown to outperform traditional HAS clients by up to 13% in a mobile network environment.