A distributed transcoding and content protection system

Daniel Díaz-Sánchez (), Rosa Sánchez-Guerrero (), Patricia Arias (), Florina Almenarez () and Andrés Marín ()
Additional contact information
Daniel Díaz-Sánchez: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Rosa Sánchez-Guerrero: Telefónica de España
Patricia Arias: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Florina Almenarez: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Andrés Marín: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Telecommunication Systems: Modelling, Analysis, Design and Management, 2016, vol. 61, issue 1, No 6, 59-76

Abstract: Abstract Video coding is a process for adapting media content to the constraints of transmission networks delivery and terminal device visualization. Moreover, content protection is also necessary. Nowadays the heterogeneity of client devices is increasing leading to different resolutions, qualities and form factors. Due to this, transcoding and protection are essential processes to be conducted in modern video distribution networks to adapt video to devices and network constraints and to enable pay per quality schemas enforcing content licenses. Unfortunately, transcoding and protection can be no longer considered linear since every single content should be transcoded in several formats and sometimes protected, so it would require a long time to finish. Modern scalable coding techniques, as H264 SVC, can help to save processing power and bandwidth providing in a single stream several video versions. However, if the enhancements of a SVC encoded content are protected separately, it would possible to enable pay-per-quality providing an additional degree of freedom to content delivery industry. Unfortunatelly, transcoding and protection entail huge doses of processing power at provider side and should be distributed. Moreover, processing key streams to decrypt enhancements that were encrypted separately can increase the complexity at receiver side. Cloud computing emerges as a potential solution for coping with large population of users with heterogeneous visualization devices. The elastic nature of cloud computing can be an advantage given the difficulty to predict the computing resources video content would require to be distributed during the entire content life. This article describes a system that distributes and parallelizes the video transcoding process as well as the content encryption, following the SaaS approach in cloud computing. Moreover, the article describes an experimental approach for generating and processing a flexible key stream that would help to simplify key management at receiver side and would allow legacy receivers to consume SVC content with separate enhancement protection.

Keywords: Transcoding; Content protection keyword; Cloud computing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11235-014-9952-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:telsys:v:61:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s11235-014-9952-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11235

DOI: 10.1007/s11235-014-9952-x

Access Statistics for this article

Telecommunication Systems: Modelling, Analysis, Design and Management is currently edited by Muhammad Khan

More articles in Telecommunication Systems: Modelling, Analysis, Design and Management from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().