Distributed stream control for self-managing media processing graphs

Interactive media applications have moved the ability to manipulate content as it is being streamed from a desirable feature to a required attribute for video servers. However, present day video server architectures continue to focus primarily on disk and network strategies for maximizing the number of concurrent streams while adhering to Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, If video servers are to manage large numbers of disparate streams exploiting a wide variety of processing algorithms, server architectures must be extended to support the integration of arbitrary isochronous processing algorithms. We believe server support for these stream processing graphs present new research challenges in video server buffer management, distributed stream control and QoS management. In this paper, we propose distributed stream control techniques which form a foundation for developing technology to address these new challenges. We have implemented the recommended techniques in the context of a commercial video server.