Scalable 360 Video Streaming using HTTP/2

Abstract

360-degree video is the main content type of Virtual Reality, providing users with immersive viewing experience. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptation method for 360-degree video streaming over HTTP/2, which can provide high viewing experience to users under time-varying network conditions and time-varying user head movements. The proposed method utilizes Scalable Video Coding to solve the trade-off between network adaptivity and user adaptivity. An optimal tile layer selection algorithm is provided. To cope with sudden throughput drops, the delivery of late layers is terminated using HTTP/2's stream termination feature. Also, a tile layer updating scheme is proposed to deal with viewport estimation errors. Experimental results show that the proposed method can improve the average bitrate of viewport by 16-17% compared to a reference method.