Evalvid-RA [examples] [downloads]

Trace driven ns-2 simulation of Rate Adaptive MPEG-4 VBR Video

The paper "Evalvid-RA: Trace Driven Simulation of Rate Adaptive MPEG-4 VBR Video" by Arne Lie and Jirka Klaue is published in ACM/Springer Multimedia Systems Journal autumn 2007. A local copy is available here. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com, for direct link use http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00530-007-0110-0.

This page contains information about Evalvid-RA, which is a tool-set for trace file simulation of rate adaptive MPEG-4 video. It was created by modifying the original Evalvid v1.2 (from Technical University of Berlin), original ns-2 interface of Evalvid (Taiwan), and implementing a rate adaptive version of SVBR into ns-2.

Note that Evalvid-RA is not (at the time of this writing) compatible with EvalVid 2.x. The practical impact of this is that one have to work on "raw" *.m4v files, and not the ISO Media File format *.mp4. Thus it is not possible to hint *.m4v files with certain MTU settings, as it is possible with *.mp4 files. The MTU parameter is however given directly in the ns-2 simulation, and the packetization will hence follow this MTU parameter without taking notice of macro-block boundaries.

Sample test files and presentation

The following test sample *.mp4 files was created by an early version of a new "rate adaptive" version of et.exe  named et_ra.exe, and modified ns-2 interface (compared to the interface made by Chih-Heng Ke, Taiwan). If the files do not play directly in your browser, manually download the files, and play them using e.g. QuickTime v7.x.

• Sample1: toggle each GOP (=400ms) between Q=4 and Q=25. Just for demonstration of et_ra.exe capability of multiplexing multiple *.m4v files into one *.m4v. *.mp4 file created my MPEG4IP converter mp4creator60.exe
• Sample2: rate adaptive SVBR and P-AQM+ECF to control low packet loss (packet loss only at ~2s because all flows are started within the first 2 seconds) and fair bandwidth share (~600kbit/s each flow, 42 flows in total, sharing 25Mbit/s bottleneck capacity). Link utilization ~94%.
• Sample3: During the first 60 seconds 120 flows are started (random start time and position in stream), during the last 60 seconds they are ended. This sequence was the first to start, and last to stop. Packet loss is zero.
• Early presentation of "Evalvid-RA" and rate adaptive SVBR December 2005 (.pdf)
• Paper in Springer Multimedia Systems Journal November 2007: See link in top text.

Software downloads

The source code included in the winzip file is for pre-processing, ns-2 simulation, and post-processing. It is tested on Windows XP SP2 platform with Cygwin latest build, and using ffmpeg v0.4.9-pre1 build 4756. Project files for MS Visual Studio are included, and cover tools for pre- and post-processing. The C-files, TCL and AWK scripts are for the ns-2 simulation, and is tested on ns-2.28. The files are complete (not patch files) and should therefore be possible to install on both older and newer ns-2 versions. See README.txt files and command.txt file for installation and usage instructions.

Current version:

• Source code: Evalvid-RA v1.03. 06.06.2008:
  Same as version 1.02 but now includes the necessary icmp.c/.h source files to make the P-AQM system work as it should.
• Win32 binaries: Evalvid-RA v1.03 Win32/Cygwin binaries (thanks to Ahmad Suki Bin Che Mohamed Arif for making me aware of that the mp4 tool was not compatible with new ffmpeg (Unexpected marker bit problem). Provided here is an older ffmpeg version that is compatible. The ffmpeg_newer can be used as decoder.)
• Need support? Please read the paper and eventually the presentation (see links above). E-mail your questions to arne.lie AT sintef.no.