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    7 views11 pages

    US6697869B1

    Uploaded by

    Leonardo Cavalcanti
    US6697869B1

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    «2) United States Patent Mallart et al. (54) EMULATION OF STREAMING OVER THE INTERNET IN A BROADCAST APPLICATION ¢ ) Inventors: Raoul Maltart, Mountain View, CA (US); Atul Sinha, Palo Ali, CA (US) (73) Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Blectronics N.V., Eindhoven (NL) (©) Notice: This patent issued on a continued pros ccution application filed under 37 CFR. 1.546), and is subject to the twenty year palent term provisions of 35 USC. 154(0}2), Subject to any disclaimer, the term ofthis patent is extended or adjusted under 35, US. 154) by 0 days, 1) Appl. No. Filed (09/138,782, Aug 24, 1998 GosF 15/16, ‘709/231; 709/205; 345/873, 709/231, 204, "700/333, 353, 308, 206; 345147 (50) References Cited US, PATENT DOCUMENTS 5520479 A * 6/1996 Bartow ea sasia7s 308.048 A * 9/1007 Belknap et 7007231 S677 A * 9/1007 Bartow et a Ms;a73 5701582 A * 121997 Delicy 35328, Ts4190 A * 5/1908 Dutton Meas SMUSA21 A * 9/1908 Saxena eta 07231 S812.216 A _ 11/1908 Anderson etl 707/208 Ssoio78 A + ‘1/1009. Ride 708/235 5953506 A * 91900 Kalra a 35408 US00669786981 US 6,697,869 BL Feb. 24,2004 (10) Patent No.: (45) Date of Patent: S9m015 A * 111999 Day ta. 7097208 Sou A © 12009 Lipkin MsS02 6.006254 A + 121090 Waters ea wos 6085.63 A+ 42000. Endo et al 705/208, 0457933 A. * 122000 Cel Je el M473 204 8H2 BL * 32001 Bariow etal Mars 208387 BL * 32001 Koga etal Msi73 ©'307301 BI * 102001 Dore a 3573 (0320094 BL * 122001 Gever ea M473 OBSLSHL BL * 122001 Gever eta. Maz FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS e 00069 A2 2 8307500 41000 naso7 HosL2906 OAL 1286 OTHER PUBLICATIONS “Design ofthe Interactive Sharing Transfer Protoco", Rich- ard C. Waters etal, Proc. of the Sixth IEEE Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Iniasieetuce for Collaborative Enterprises, 1998, pp. 140-147. (List continued on next page) Primary Examiner—Acio Etienne Assistant Examiner—Abdullabi E, Salad (74) Attorney, Agent, or Firm—Michael J. Ure on ABSTRACT. In a broadcast application on a client-server network the streaming is emulated of animation data aver the Internet to ‘large number of elieas. The animation is considered & Sequence of stiles. State information is sent to the clients instead of the graphics data itsell. The eliens generate the animation data itself under contol of the site information. The server and clients communicate using a shared objest protocol. Thus, streaming is accomplished as well as hroadeast without running into severe network bandwidth problems, 12 Claims, 4 Drawing Sheets US 6,697,869 BL Page 2 (OTHER PUBLICATIONS, “VieuaLive Soccer” of Orad Hi-Tec Systems, Lid, a8 found at eho viralive-com> “Key Concepts", Mar. 5, 1996, at: . “DIS-Protoeol”,at. “Dead reckoning in DIS” at -, * cited by examiner U.S. Patent Feb. 24, 2004 Sheet 1 of 4 US 6,697,869 BL FVaMi “114 PLAYER SOURCE | CHANNEL ENCODER | ENCODER SOURCE ENCODER {SERVER US 6,697,869 BL Sheet 2 of 4 Feb. 24, 2004 US. Patent US 6,697,869 BL Sheet 3 of 4 Feb. 24, 2004 US. Patent sponansjanoaswell,_ "ENNGHO | 3008 oP a U.S. Patent Feb. 24, 2004 Sheet 4 of 4 US 6,697,869 BL ‘SERVER 608 612 6 610 614 as 608 610 614 STATE STATE Oo INFO. _| NETWORK | Syeg o a oo aa | 616 SERVER CLIENT a STATE 302 | 602 608 610 \_} 614 ee 620 = 618 604 516 Sour S00 FIG. 6 US 6,697,869 BI 1 EMULATION OF STREAMING OVER THE INTERNET IN A BROADCAST ‘APPLICATION FIELD OF THE INVENTION ‘The invention relates to streaming multimedi files via network, The invention relates in particular fo enabling the ‘emulation of streaming graphics or video animation over the Internet within beoadeast context, BACKGROUND ART ‘The term “streaming” refers to transferring data from a server (oa cient so that i ean be processed as a steady and ‘continuous stream atthe receiving end, Steaming technolo- ies are becoming increasingly important withthe growth of, the Internet because most users do not have fast enough access to download lange multimedia files comprising, e., _raphies animation, audio, vdeo, of a combination thereof, fle. Streaming, however, enables the clial’s browser of plug-in to start processing the data before the entire fil has been received. For streaming to work, the client side receiv ing the file must be able to collet the data and send it as 8 seady scam (othe application that is processing the daa ‘This means that ifthe client receives the data faser than required, the exeess data needs to be bulfered. IF the data does not arrive in time, on the ther hand, the presentation ‘of the data will not be smooth ‘The term “file” is used herein to indicate an entity of related data items availale to a data processing al eapable ‘of being processed as an entity, Within the context of the invention, the term “fle” may refer to data generated in real-time as well as dala relieved from storage. ‘Amoog the technologies that are currently available or ‘under development forthe communication of graphics dat via the Internet are VRML 97 and MPEG-4. VRML 97 stands for "Virlual Reality Modeling Language”, and is an Intemational Standaed (SOMEC 14772) file format for sleseribing interactive 3D multimedia content om the Inter- net, MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC standard being developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group). In both standards, the graphical content is structured in a socalled scene graph ‘Acsoene graph i a family tree of coordinate systems and shapes, that colletively-deseribe graphics. work. The {op-most item in the scene family tee is the world coord nate system. The world coordinate system acts a8 the parent for one or more child coordinate systems and shapes. Those child coordinate systems ae, in tu, parents to futher child ‘coordinate systems and shapes, and $0 o VRML js a file format for describing objects. VRML. Aefines a set of objects uselul for doing AD graphics, multi-media, and interactive objectworld building. These ‘objects are-Called nodes, and contain elemental data which is Stored in fields and events. Typically, the scene graph ‘comprises structural nodes, Ieal nodes, interpolation aodes. tnd sensor nodes, The structural nodes define the spatial relationship of objects within a scene. The leaf nades define the physical appearance of the objects. The interpolation nodes define animations, The sensor nodes define user interaction for particular user input moctlitis. VRMIL does not dreetly support steaming of data from a server into a client, Facilites such as synchronization between stam nd time stamping that are essential in streaming do not exist in VRML. However, VRML has a mechanism that allows extecnal progeams to interact with VRML clienls, This bas ‘been use in sports applications to load animation data into 2 the client, See, for example, “ViruaLive Soover” of Orad HicTee Systems, Ltd at . This ‘web document discusses a process for producing eeaisic, animated, three-dimensional graphic clips. that simul ‘ctual soccer match highlights fr being sent va the Internet. ‘The system generates content that complements television sports coverage with mullimedia-rich Web pages i near real time. In this example, the process works in two steps. First the graphies models of the stadium and ofthe socee players ae downloaded along with an extemal program, inthis case 1 Java Applet. The user ean then interact withthe external program to request a particular animation. The data for this !nimation is then downloaded into the cleat and interacted ‘with by the user. In terms of nod type, this process first downloads the structural and leaf nodes, and thereupon the imerpolation nodes. By changing the set of interpolation node’, itis possible o nun a different animation sequence. ‘The process used in this example is somewhat equivalent to a single step process in which the user can choose the ‘complete VRML file that contains all the models (structural nodes) and all the animation data (interpolator nodes). This ‘approach leads to long download times before any content ‘ean be played on the client, This i experienced as frustrating experience, especially if compared to TV brosd- ‘eas where content is available instantly. ‘The other technology introduced above, MPEG-4, defines binary description Forma for scenes (BLES) that bis wide ‘overlap with VRML 97. MPEG-4, o0 the other hand, has heen designed ta support straming of graphics aswell as for video. MPEG-4 defies two serverclient protocols for Updating and animating scenes: BIES-Update and BIES- Anim. Some ofthe advantages of MPEG=4 over VRML are the coding ofthe scene description and ofthe animation data ss wel the buil-instreaming eapabiliy. The user does aot have to wait forthe complete dovnload of the animation ‘data, For example, inthe soccer match broadcast application ‘mentioned earlier the animation an start a8 soon as the models of the players and the stadium are dowaloaded. MPEG-4 further has the advantage that it more efficient ‘owing 10 its IFS tansport protocol that uses a compressed binacy format Within the context of streaming, the known technologies mentioned abowe have several limitations with regard to bandwidth usage, packet-loss concealment or recovery and rmultiusce interactivity, especially in a broadeast to lage numbers of clients ‘As to bandh, the complete animation is generated at the server. Tis rests in a large amount of data that needs to be transported over the network, eg, the Interet, con- necting the client tothe observer, For example, inthe soccer broadcast application meationed above, the 22 soccer play= fers need (0 be animated, Each animation data point per individual player comprises a positon in 3D space and a set ‘of s4, 15 joint eotations to model the player's posture. This represents 63 floating-point values. IP its assumed that the animation update rate i 15 datapoints per second a bitrate ‘of 665 Kbps is required. This bit-rate ean be reduced through ‘compression. Typically, using BIFS reduces the bitrate by 4 factor of 20, giving a bitrate of about 33 Kbps. However, this number bis not taken into account overhead required for the Internet protocols (RTP, UDP ancl IP) snd for additional data types, such as audio, However, typical modems cur rently commercially available on the consumer market have a capacity of 288 Kbps or 336 Kpbs. It is clear that ‘teaming animation causes a problem at the end user due to Dandwidth Timitations. Ta the ease of a broadeast to a large numberof clients, say 100,000 clients, the data stream will US 6,697,869 BI 3 need to be duplicated at several routers. A router om the Internet determines the next network point to which a packet shouldbe forwarded on its way toward is final destination The router decides which way to send each information packet based on its curtent understanding ofthe state ofthe networks it is connected to, A router is located at any juncture of networks oF gateway, including each Taternet poin-of-presenee. Its clear that the broadcast could lead t0| an unmanageable data explosion across the Internet. To, prevent that from happening, the actual bandwidth nceds to be limited to much lower than 2838 Kbps ‘As to packet loss concealment, VRML-based systems. utlize reliable protocols (TCP). Packet losses are not an issue here Inthe ease of MPEG-4, BIFS uses RTP/UDEIP, ‘Appacket loss recovery mechanism is therefore required. In ‘point-to-point application, re-ransmission of lot packets ‘en be consered, Ina brosdeast situation, however this is much more complex. In both cases, however, MPEG reli- ability requies either higher bandwidi usage (redundancy) ‘or higher Inteney (retransmission, As to multi-user interactivity, both VRML and MPEG-4 are essentially based on a server-lient communication. No provisions exist to enable communication among multiple clients For more information on VRML sec, tor example, “Key Concepts", Mar. 5, 1996, at: , or “Interaetwork Infea- steueture: Requirements for Virtual Environments", D. P Brutzman et al, Jan. 23, 1996, publicly available at: For more information on MPEG-4 see, for example, “Overview of the MPEG-4 Standard”, ISOIECITCLSC29) WGIIN2323 ed. Rob Koeneo, July 1998, publicly available a ip/og.cel tempep sta mpegs OBJECT OF THE INVENTION 11 is therefore an object of the invention to provide a techaology that enables a client to process multimedia data as if it were a steady and continuous stream. It is anolber ‘object to enable the continuous processing ata large number ‘of clients ina broadeast over th Internet Its noted thatthe problems identified above become rather acute in a broad- ‘ast application, ‘SUMMARY OP THE INVENTION ‘To this end, the invention provides a method of emulating steaming 4 multimedia fle via a network t0 a receiving, ation connected to the network. Respective state informa- tion descriptive of respective states of the file is supplied. “The tvceiving station is enabled 10 receive the respective state information via the network and is enabled to locally ‘gencrate the mulimedia file under control of the respective information, Ina broadeas for animation the invention relates 0 a method of supplying data vin @ network for enabling displaying. graphics animation. Respective stat information i supplied over the network descriptive of successive respective states ofthe animation, The espective Sate information is received va the network, The recevin station is enabled to generate the animation under control of the respective state information upon receipt Inthe invention the mulkimedia fife (animation, video or audio file) is deseribed as a succession of states. It is this ‘ate information that gets tansmited (othe clients eather than the animation dats itself. The term “emulating” there 4 fore emphasizes thatthe information communicated fo the

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