Roku, Inc.
Dynamically adjusting video to improve synchronization with audio

Abstract:

Disclosed herein are system, apparatus, article of manufacture, method and/or computer program product embodiments, and/or combinations and sub-combinations thereof, for synchronizing playback of audio and video, wherein the audio is transmitted to wireless speakers over a wireless medium. Some embodiments operate by receiving content for playback from a source, wherein the content comprises the audio and the video; determining that synchronization of playback of the audio and video will not be acceptable, by analyzing the wireless medium to determine a probable transmission time it will take for the audio to be transmitted to the wireless speakers over the wireless medium; determining that a video buffer is not large enough to buffer the video long enough to compensate for the probable transmission time, based on at least a size of the video buffer and a resolution of the video; and requesting a lower resolution encoding of the video, wherein the requested video is of a resolution that can be buffered in the video buffer sufficiently long to compensate for the probable transmission time of the audio to the wireless speakers. Also, a lower quality encoding of the audio can be requested. Such lower quality audio will take less time to transmit to the wireless speakers so less buffering of the video will be needed to compensate for transmission delays of the audio.