An Optimal Tile-Based Approach for Viewport-Adaptive 360-Degree Video Streaming

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new adaptation approach for viewport-adaptive streaming of 360-degree videos over the Internet. The proposed approach is able to systematically decide versions of tiles according to user head movements and network conditions by taking into account not only viewport estimation errors, but also users head movements in each segment duration. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can effectively adapt 360-degree videos to both varying network conditions and user's head movements. Compared to existing approaches, the proposed approach can improve the average viewport quality by up to 3.8 dB and reduce the standard deviation of the viewport quality by up to 1.1 dB. Also, the impacts of the segment duration and the buffer size are investigated. It is found that long segment durations and large buffer sizes have significant impacts on the performances of tile selection methods.