Energy-Quality-aware Variable Framerate Pareto-Front for Adaptive Video Streaming

Abstract: Optimizing framerate for a given bitrate-spatial resolution pair in adaptive video streaming is essential to maintain perceptual quality while considering decoding complexity. Low framerates at low bitrates reduce compression artifacts and decrease decoding energy. We propose a novel method, Decoding-complexity aware Framerate Prediction (DECODRA), which employs a Variable Framerate Pareto-front approach to predict an optimized framerate that minimizes decoding energy under quality degradation constraints. DECODRA dynamically adjusts the framerate based on current bitrate and spatial resolution, balancing trade-offs between framerate, perceptual quality, and decoding complexity. Extensive experimentation with the Inter-4K dataset demonstrates DECODRA's effectiveness, yielding an average decoding energy reduction of up to 13.45%, with minimal VMAF reduction of 0.33 points at a low-quality degradation threshold, compared to the default 60 fps encoding. Even at an aggressive threshold, DECODRA achieves significant energy savings of 13.45% while only reducing VMAF by 2.11 points. In this way, DECODRA extends mobile device battery life and reduces the energy footprint of streaming services by providing a more energy-efficient video streaming pipeline.