gstreamer/docs/design/part-qos.txt

Quality-of-Service
------------------

Quality of service is about measuring and adjusting the real-time
performance of a pipeline.

The real-time performance is always measured relative to the pipeline
clock and typically happens in the sinks when they synchronize buffers
against the clock.

The measurements result in QOS events that aim to adjust the datarate
in one or more upstream elements. Two types of adjustements can be
made:

  - short time "emergency" corrections based on latest observation
    in the sinks.
  - long term rate corrections based on trends observed in the sinks.


QoS event
---------

The QoS event travels upstream and contains the following fields:

 - timestamp:  The timestamp on the buffer that generated the QoS
               event
 - jitter:     The difference of that timestamp against the clock.

 - proportion: Long term prediction of the ideal rate relative to
               normal rate to get optimal quality.

The rest of this document deals with how these values can be calculated
in a sink.


Collecting statistics
---------------------

A buffer with timestamp B1 arrives in the sink at time T1. The buffer
timestamp is then synchronized against the clock which yields a jitter J1
return value from the clock.

If the jitter is positive, the entry arrived in time and can be rendered.

If the jitter is negative however, the entry arrived too late in the sink 
and should therefore be dropped. A dropped buffer should generate a QoS
event upstream.

Using the jitter we can calculate the time when the buffer arrived in the
sink: 
     
  T1 = B1 - J1.                                (1)

The time the buffer leaves the sink after synchronisation is measured as:

  T2 = B1 - (J1 < 0 : J1 : 0)                  (2)

For buffers that arrive in time (J1 >= 0) the buffer leaves after synchronisation
which is exactly B1. Late buffers (J1 < 0) leave the sink when they arrive,
whithout any synchronisation, which is T1 = B1 - J1.

Using a previous T0 and a new T1, we can calculate the time it took for
upstream to generate a buffer with timestamp B1.

  PT1 = T0 - T1                                (3)

We call PT1 the processing time needed to generate buffer with timestamp B1.

Moreover, given the duration of the buffer D1, the current data rate (DR1) of 
the upstream element is given as:

       PT1   T1 - T0
 DR1 = --- = -------                           (4)
       D1      D1

For values 0.0 < DR1 <= 1.0 the upstream element is producing faster than
real-time. If DR1 is exactly 1.0, the element is running at a perfect speed.

Values DR1 > 1.0 means that the upstream element cannot produce buffers of
duration D1 in real-time. It is exactly DR1 that tells the amount of speedup
we require from upstream to regain real-time performance.


Short term correction
---------------------

The timestamp and jitter serve as short term correction information
for upstream elements. Indeed, given arrival time T1 as given in (1)
we can be certain that buffers with a timestamp B2 < T1 will be too late
in the sink.

In case of a negative jitter we can therefore send a QoS message with
a timestamp B1, jitter J1 and proportion given by (4).

This allows an upstream element to not generate any data with a timestamps
B2 < T1, where the element can derive T1 as B1 - J1.

This will effectively result in frame drops.

The element can even do a better estimation of the next valid timestamp it
should output.

Indeed, given the element generate a buffer with timestamp B1 that arrived
in time in the sink but then received a QoS message stating B2 arrived J2
too late. This means generating B2 took (B2 - J2) - B1 = T1 - T0 = PT1, as 
given in (3). Given the buffer B2 had a duration D2 and assuming that
generating a new buffer B3 will take the same amount of processing time,
a better estimation for B3 would then be:

  B3 = T1 + D3 * DR2

 expanding gives:

  B3 = (B2 - J2) + D3 * (B2 - J2 - B1)
                        --------------  
		             D2

 assuming the durations of the frames are equal and thus D2 = D3:

  B3 = (B2 - J2) + (B2 - J2 - B1)

  B3 =  2 * (B2 - J2) - B1

 also:

  B1 = B2 - D2

 so:

  B3 =  2 * (B2 - J2) - (B2 - D2)

Which yields a more accurate prediction for the next buffer given as:

  B3 =  B2 - 2 * J2 + D2                          (5)


Long term correction
--------------------

The datarate used to calculate (5) for the short term prediction is based
on a single observation. A more accurate datarate can be obtained by
creating a running average over multiple datarate observations.

This average is less susceptible to sudden changes that would only influence
the datarate for a very short period.

A running average is calculated over the observations given in (4) and is
used as the proportion member in the QoS message that is sent upstream.

Receivers of the QoS message should permanently reduce their datarate 
as given by the proportion member. Failure to do so will certainly lead to
dropped frames and worse a QoS.


QoS strategies
--------------

 - lowering quality
   - dropping frames
   - switch to a lower decoding/encoding quality
   - switch to a lower quality source

QoS implementations
-------------------