Microsoft Corporation
Thin-cloud system for live streaming content

Abstract:

A thin-cloud system for distributing content, for example, live streaming video content, from a broadcaster to a viewer is provided herein. The computing devices of the broadcaster can provide the multi-bitrate transcoding, of the two or more bitstreams, sent to a file server, which alleviates the need for the file server to encode the streams for a viewer. These multiple streams are received by a file server for provision to one or more viewers. The viewers can receive the streams at one of the two or more bitrates. If the viewer receives the content at a lower bitrate, the viewers can employ a machine learning (ML) co-processor that can operate as an accelerator to improve the inbound content, if that content is provided at a lower bitrate, and thus, a lower resolution. The file server can train and provide the ML models used for the acceleration.