Adaptive real-time camera streaming application

Abstract

Nowadays, smartphone is a very common communication tool, 8 out of 10 people are having a smartphone instead of a normal mobile, a smartphone does not only provide basic communication function but also some media and entertaining applications. One of the media function is the video recording, people can record their life and share with their friend later. However, it is time-consuming for your friend to wait for your video upload. So this project is going to implement a real-time video sharing application for your friend to watch your video in real time. Nonetheless, one of the bottlenecks of real time video streaming is the bandwidth. For mobile users, although 3G is very common nowadays and the transmission rate is much better than 2G but the speed is still never guaranteed and fluctuates all the time according to different area and number of user with the same network provider. If non-compressed video is sent over low bandwidth network, it will cause the problem of delay and lag, as a result the user cannot enjoy a smooth video. To tackle it, some methods are needed to reduce the size of the video according to the network condition. In this project, it will demonstrate an unstable network with fluctuated bandwidth. And auto detection on the bandwidth status is used to manipulate the frame size of the video (i.e. reduce the frame size under low bandwidth). Besides, the users can also make use of the mix quality video function to optimize the quality of a specific part of the video and current bandwidth. And for the streaming protocol, the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is used for transmission, it is a protocol for audio and video delivering over IP network. The video frame will pack as a RTP packet and send from the client to server.