Higher quality live streaming under lower uplink bandwidth: an approach of super-resolution based video coding

Ying Chen, Qing Li, Aoyang Zhang, Longhao Zou, Yong Jiang, Zhimin Xu, Junlin Li, Zhenhui Yuan

Abstract: With the growing popularity of live streaming, high video quality and low latency with limited uplink bandwidth have become a significant challenge. In this study, we propose Live Super-Resolution Based Video Coding (LiveSRVC), a novel video uploading framework that improves the quality of live streaming with low latency under limited uplink bandwidth. We design a new super-resolution-based key frame coding module to improve the coding compression efficiency. LiveSRVC dynamically selects the bitrate and the compression ratio of key frames, mitigating the influence of uplink bandwidth capacity on live streaming quality. Trace-driven emulations verify that LiveSRVC can provide the same quality while reducing up to 50% of the required bandwidth compared to the original encoding method (H.264). LiveSRVC consumes at least 10X less GPU occupation time compared to the method of reconstructing all frames with super-resolution.