U.S. patent application number 12/218594 was filed with the patent office on 2010-01-21 for streaming media software interface to a dispersed data storage network.
This patent application is currently assigned to Cleversafe, Inc.. Invention is credited to Greg Dhuse, S. Christopher Gladwin.
Application Number | 20100017531 12/218594 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 41531262 |
Filed Date | 2010-01-21 |
United States Patent
Application |
20100017531 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Dhuse; Greg ; et
al. |
January 21, 2010 |
Streaming media software interface to a dispersed data storage
network
Abstract
A client computer streams a digital media presentation from a
dispersed data storage network including a plurality of slice
servers. A dispersed data storage network access component streams
data directly from the dispersed data storage network and passes
data to a media player, also residing on the client computer.
Inventors: |
Dhuse; Greg; (Chicago,
IL) ; Gladwin; S. Christopher; (Chicago, IL) |
Correspondence
Address: |
Garlick Harrison & Markison (CS)
P.O.Box 160727
Austin
TX
78716
US
|
Assignee: |
Cleversafe, Inc.
|
Family ID: |
41531262 |
Appl. No.: |
12/218594 |
Filed: |
July 16, 2008 |
Current U.S.
Class: |
709/231 |
Current CPC
Class: |
H04L 67/1097
20130101 |
Class at
Publication: |
709/231 |
International
Class: |
G06F 15/16 20060101
G06F015/16 |
Claims
1. A system for streaming a digital media presentation to a client
computer from a dispersed data storage network, said dispersed data
storage network including at least a plurality of slice servers,
wherein at least some of said plurality of slice servers are
located in separate facilities and wherein a streamed data segment
cannot be reconstructed without accessing more than one of said
plurality of slice servers, the system comprising: i) a client
computer coupled to a network with access to said dispersed data
storage network; ii) a media player operating on said client
computer for presenting digital media to a user; and iii) a
dispersed data storage network access component operating on said
client computer and interfaced to said media player wherein said
dispersed data storage network access component streams digital
media from said dispersed data storage network and said media
player presents said digital media to said user.
2. The system of claim 1 wherein said media player is a cross
platform media player and said dispersed data storage access
component is a cross platform component.
3. The system of claim 1 further comprising a media player plugin
component.
4. The system of claim 3 wherein said media player plugin
interfaces to said dispersed data storage network access component
using Java Native Interface.
5. The system of claim 3 wherein said media player plugin
interfaces to said dispersed data storage network access component
using a socket.
6. The system of claim 3 wherein said media player plugin
interfaces to said dispersed data storage network access component
by static linking or dynamic linking.
7. The system of claim 1 wherein said digital media presentation is
segmented into a plurality of data segments, and each segment is
encoded so that the unavailability of less than a number of slice
servers required to reconstruct the segment at a highest encoded
quality results in the data segment being reconstructed at a lower
encoded quality and played back by the media player at said lower
encoded quality.
8. The system of claim 1 wherein said client computer is a personal
computer.
Description
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
[0001] This application is related to the following co-pending
applications, all of which are assigned to Cleversafe, Inc. of
Chicago, Ill. and are hereby incorporated by reference: Ser. Nos.
11/973,613, 11/973,622, 11/973,542, 11/973,621, 11/241,555,
11/403,684, 11/404,071, 11/403,391, and 12/080,042, as well as the
application entitled FILE SYSTEM ADAPTED FOR USE WITH A DISPERSED
DATA STORAGE NETWORK, filed on Jul. 11, 2008 by inventors Srinivas
Palthepu, Andrew Baptist, Bart Cilfone, Vance Thornton, Greg Dhuse,
Ilya Volvolski, Jason Resch, John Quigley, S. Christopher Gladwin,
and Zachary Mark, all of Cleversafe, Inc. of Chicago, Ill.
REFERENCE TO INCORPORATED COMPACT DISC
[0002] This application incorporates by reference the following
source code files submitted on a compact disc along with this
application:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
[0003] The present invention relates generally to systems,
apparatus, and methods for distributed data storage, and more
particularly to systems, apparatus, and methods for distributed
data storage using an information dispersal algorithm so that no
one location will store an entire copy of stored data, and more
particularly still to systems, apparatus, and methods for
interfacing a media player application to a dispersed data storage
network.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
[0004] Dispersed data storage networks ("DDSNs") store data as an
arbitrary number of data slices, generally with each data slice
being stored on a separate slice server. Before a collection of
data is stored it is segmented into a number of data segments,
which may be of fixed or variable sizes. Each data segment is then
sliced into a predetermined arbitrary number of data slices. Each
data slice will generally contain minimal or no usable information
by itself, but instead, must be combined with other data slices to
reconstruct a usable data segment. DDSNs offer a number of
advantages over traditional storage solutions including greater
security and reliability.
[0005] Prior art DDSN systems, such as those offered by Cleversafe,
Inc. of Chicago, Ill., have generally used an access computer,
sometimes referred to as a Grid Access Computer or an Accesser.TM..
The access computer is generally a high-performance server adapted
to provide DDSN access to a large number of clients, such as an
office of 20 or more users. Generally, the access computer does not
have to be specified to handle the worst case scenario of each
client computer accessing a maximum amount of data from the DDSN
simultaneously, as office use often comes in bursts as a file is
read or written. However, some types of usage, such as streaming
media, require a continuous stream of data.
[0006] Streaming digital media is well known in the art, with Adobe
Flash, Windows Media Audio and Video, and QuickTime being well
known examples. Streaming media is generally served to clients by a
streaming media server, which is specified to handle some number of
simultaneous streams. Media serving platforms use a number of
techniques to share streams across multiple streaming media
servers, such as round-robin allocation. Prior art media serving
platforms have not made use of DDSNs, and instead, have utilized
individual or shared Redundant Array of Independent Drives ("RAID")
or Storage Area Networks ("SAN").
[0007] One technique used by media providers to improve reliability
and quality of service for streaming digital media presentations is
the use of Content Delivery Networks ("CDNs"). A CDN is a network
of computers that cooperate to deliver content to users. Generally,
content is replicated among servers on an as needed basis, so that
a server with the most desirable performance characteristics can
serve content to a particular client. Often, content is replicated
to the network so that it is available from a number of geographic
locations, based on the assumption that a server located
geographically close to a particular client will provide a better
quality of service connection, if all else is equal.
[0008] A particular digital media stream will usually provide a
specific quality. For example, a digital media presentation may be
encoded at 720 pixels by 480 pixels, at 30 frames with second, with
audio provided as 64 kilobits per second MP3. If quality levels are
desired to serve users with less modern hardware or slower network
connections, different media presentations will be encoded at the
desired quality levels. Certain streaming media technologies allow
a player to scale the frame rate of streamed video by skipping
frames. This may result in "jerky" video, but will still allow a
viewer to view the presentation.
[0009] More recent advances in encoding technology allow a single
presentation to scale across a number of quality levels. For
example, Flexible Block Wavelet encoding allows a streaming media
presentation to scale across an arbitrary number of resolutions
based on the bandwidth available to a particular client, and the
ability of the client to process data.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
[0010] Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a
system, apparatus, and method for accessing streaming digital media
stored by a DDSN.
[0011] Another object of the invention is to provide a system,
apparatus, and method for accessing streaming digital media stored
by a DDSN in a cross-platform manner.
[0012] Another object of the invention is to provide a system,
apparatus, and method for implementing a high-performance streaming
digital media player plugin to access streaming digital media
stored by a DDSN.
[0013] Another object of the invention is to provide a system,
apparatus, and method for accessing streaming digital media stored
by a DDSN from a client computer as opposed to from an access
computer.
[0014] Another object of the invention is to provide a system,
apparatus, and method for accessing streaming digital media stored
by a DDSN from a client computer that is resilient to interruptions
of network service disabling a portion of the DDSN.
[0015] Another object of the invention is to provide a system,
apparatus, and method for accessing streaming digital media stored
by a DDSN so that the quality of the presentation scales with the
robustness of the DDSN.
[0016] Other advantages of the disclosed invention will be clear to
a person of ordinary skill in the art. It should be understood,
however, that a system, method, or apparatus could practice the
disclosed invention while not achieving all of the enumerated
advantages, and that the protected invention is defined by the
claims.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0017] The disclosed invention achieves its objectives by providing
a system for streaming a digital media presentation to a client
computer from a dispersed data storage network. The dispersed data
storage network includes a plurality of slice servers each of which
may be located in a separate facility. The digital media
presentation is broken into a plurality of data segments, and each
data segment may only be reconstructed by combining data slices
from more than one of the plurality of slice servers. Within the
system, a client computer, such as a personal computer or a
cellular telephone, is coupled to a network with access to the
dispersed data storage network. A dispersed data storage network
access component reads data segments from the dispersed data
storage network and passes them to a media player operating on the
client computer, which presents the streamed digital media
presentation to a user.
[0018] In one embodiment, both the media player and the dispersed
data storage network access component are implemented using a cross
platform technology. Where this is not possible, the dispersed data
storage network access component may be implemented as a cross
platform component and interfaced to the media player with a
plugin. The plugin may interface with the dispersed data storage
network access component using a socket or Java Native Interface.
Alternatively, the dispersed data storage network component may be
implemented as a native component and interfaced to the plugin
using static or dynamic linking.
[0019] In a further embodiment, the streamed digital media
presentation may be encoded using a scalable technology, so that as
slice servers become unavailable due to network outages or other
reasons, the quality of the streamed digital media presentation
degrades, but is otherwise still accessible.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0020] Although the characteristic features of this invention will
be particularly pointed out in the claims, the invention itself,
and the manner in which it may be made and used, may be better
understood by referring to the following description taken in
connection with the accompanying drawings forming a part hereof,
wherein like reference numerals refer to like parts throughout the
several views and in which:
[0021] FIG. 1 is a network diagram of a streaming media server
streaming data from a dispersed data storage network through an
access computer to a client computer;
[0022] FIG. 2 is a network diagram of a client computer accessing
digital media stored on a DDSN using a Cross Platform Media Player
as well as a Cross Platform DDSN access library;
[0023] FIG. 3 is a network diagram of a client computer accessing
digital media stored on a DDSN using a proprietary player linked to
a Java DDSN access library using a proprietary format DDSN media
client plugin and JNI;
[0024] FIG. 4 is a network diagram of a client computer accessing
digital media stored on a DDSN using a proprietary player linked to
a Cross Platform DDSN access program using a DDSN media client
plugin and a local socket;
[0025] FIG. 5 is a network diagram of a client computer accessing
digital media stored on a DDSN using a proprietary player with a
media player specific plugin along with a DDSN client library
especially suited to the specific platform on which the media
player is running; and
[0026] FIG. 6 is a network diagram of a client computer accessing
digital media stored on a DDSN using a media player communicating
with a local DDSN server using a socket or other form of
inter-process communication.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE ILLUSTRATED EMBODIMENT
[0027] Turning to the Figures, and to FIG. 1 in particular, a
client computer accessing a streaming media presentation is
depicted. This architecture represents the simplest way to serve
streaming digital media from a DDSN to a client computer 102 using
any type of media player. The client computer 102 is coupled to a
LAN or the Internet 104 using any type of network technology, such
as an Ethernet port or a Wireless Network port. A media server 106
contains stream definitions for one or more streaming media
presentations. The media server is coupled to a LAN or the Internet
108 using any type of network technology. It should be noted that
network 104 and network 108 could be the same network or a
different network. The media server 106 accesses streaming digital
media through an access computer 110 from a plurality of slice
servers 122,124,126 coupled to the Internet or some other type of
Wide Area Network 112. Access computer 110, such as those available
from Cleversafe, Inc., present the DDSN to the streaming media
server 106 as a local or networked file system, so no interface
software would be required for the streaming media server 106. An
example of a refinement that is not depicted would be to integrate
the media server 106 with the access computer 110. This would
potentially allow for better performance, as network latency would
not slow down communications between the media server and the
access computer 110.
[0028] The approach of FIG. 1 would effectively support all prior
art streaming media systems. Further, the implemented system would
provide for resiliency to network outages across a portion of the
DDSN, as access to an arbitrary predetermined number of slice
servers 122,124,126 could be lost and the streaming presentation
would still be available to be served to clients. In addition, many
of the advantages of a content delivery network would be retained,
as a DDSN generally includes geographically dispersed servers.
Further, as outlined in U.S. patent application Ser. No.
11/973,622, entitled "SMART ACCESS TO A DISPERSED DATA STORAGE
NETWORK," filed on Oct. 9, 2007, assigned to Cleversafe, Inc., and
hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, slice servers
holding applicable content would be ranked by various performance
criteria to ensure that the accessing client would receive a high
quality of service without the replication of content required with
a CDN. However, a network failure between the client computer 102
and the streaming media server 106 or between the streaming media
server 106 and the access computer 110 would still disable access
to the streaming media presentation.
[0029] FIG. 2 depicts an alternate network architecture whereby a
client computer 102 executing a cross platform media player 142
interfaces to a DDSN using a cross platform DDSN access library
144. Examples of suitable cross platform technologies include Sun's
Java and Microsoft's .NET, as well as Tcl, Python, Perl, and Ruby.
However, any suitable cross platform technology could be used. In
this architecture, the client computer 102 directly accesses slice
servers 122,124,126 included within a DDSN through the Internet or
another type of Wide Area Network 112. This architecture provides
considerable resiliency to network outages across the DDSN. For
example, if the DDSN is implemented using thirty two separate slice
servers, of which twenty four are required to successfully assemble
and utilize data, access could be lost to eight slice servers
without any noticeable interruption in a streaming media
presentation. Also, as each client computer 102 is responsible for
streaming its own data, the expense of a separate access computer
can be saved. In addition, this architecture could also utilize
Cleversafe's smart access technology to rank slice servers by
various criteria and thereby provide a high quality of service
connection to the DDSN. Moreover, a system implementing this
approach would provide for better scalability, as computation would
be offloaded to individual client computers, and less bandwidth and
equipment would be required overall, as the streaming server is
eliminated.
[0030] FIG. 3 depicts another network architecture whereby a client
computer 102 executing a media player specifically adapted for use
on a particular type of system could interface to a DDSN using a
client library implemented with Java 144. Examples of a proprietary
media player 152 include, but are not limited to, Windows Media
Player, Real Player, QuickTime, iTunes, and VLC media player. A
media client plugin 154 interfaces with a proprietary player 152
using an application programming interface developed by the
manufacturer of the proprietary player. The media client plugin 154
interfaces with a Java DDSN client library 144 using Java Native
Interface 148. This implementation would provide similar advantages
to the implementation of FIG. 2, with the additional advantage of
working with the most popular media players presently
available.
[0031] FIG. 4 depicts another software interface between a DDSN
client access program 162 and a proprietary media player 152. In
this case a media client plugin 158 interfaces with a proprietary
player 152 as in the embodiment depicted in FIG. 3. However, the
media client plugin 158 interfaces with a cross platform DDSN
client access program 162 using a socket 160 or some other form of
inter-process communications ("IPC"), such as a memory mapped file
or mailbox. This implementation provides similar advantages to the
implementation of FIG. 3 without being tied to the use of Java and
JNI, but instead, allowing for the use of any cross platform
technology.
[0032] FIG. 5 depicts a platform specific interface between a media
player 152 and a DDSN using a platform specific DDSN client library
174. In this implementation media player specific plugin 172
interfaces with a media player 152 and a platform specific DDSN
client library 174. The interface could be through any form of
static or dynamic linking between platform specific compiled
software. Further, it should be understood that platform specific
only refers to the fact that the referenced software is compiled
for a specific platform, even though the code base could be more or
less identical between different platforms. As in the
implementations of FIGS. 2 through 4, the client computer and its
media player directly stream digital media from slice servers
122,124,126 through the Internet 112 or some other Wide Area
Network. This implementation would provide all of the advantages of
the implementation of FIG. 3, with the additional advantage of
providing the best performance of any implementation. However, a
different plugin 172 and a different DDSN client library 174 would
be required for each supported platform.
[0033] FIG. 6 depicts a direct inter-process communication link,
such as a socket, between any media player 152 and a local DDSN
server 178. The media player 152 could be a platform specific media
player or a cross platform media player. The local DDSN server 178
could also be a cross-platform DDSN server or a platform specific
DDSN server. The specific media player 152 opens an inter-process
communication link, such as a socket, to the local DDSN server 178,
which then acts as a relay to pull content from slice servers
122,124,126 through the Internet or some other Wide Area Network.
As all media players are able to stream content in certain
protocols, such as HTTP, RTSP, or MMS, a local server can act as an
intermediary by pulling data from the DDSN and passing it to the
media player through an appropriate mechanism. This implementation
provides an elegant solution to interfacing a media players to a
DDSN while only providing a slight amount of additional overhead
when compared to the solution of FIG. 5, and retaining all of the
advantages of FIGS. 2-4.
[0034] FIGS. 2-6 all describe streaming media systems whereby a
client directly accesses a DDSN for streaming media. As described,
one advantage of this architecture is resiliency to potentially
large scale network outages. Another potential advantage requires a
change in the streaming media technology itself. When combined with
a scalable streaming media technology, such as Flexible Block
Wavelets, an arbitrarily scalable and reliable streaming media
system can be realized. For example, if a thirty two slice server
DDSN is implemented, the system may serve streaming media
presentations at a quality of 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels at 60
frames per second if twenty four or more slice servers can be
accessed. However, if sixteen to twenty three slice servers can be
accessed, the quality may be reduced to 1280 pixels by 1080 pixels
at 30 frames per second. Further, if twelve to fifteen slice
servers can be accessed the quality may be reduced to 1280 pixels
by 720 pixels at 30 frames per second. Finally, if between eight
and eleven slice servers may be accessed, the quality may be
further reduced to 1024 pixels by 768 pixels at fifteen frames per
second. It should be understood that a system could be tailored to
provide any level of quality with any number of slice servers
available. It should also be understood that, while the examples
addressed the scaling of video quality, similar techniques could be
used to scale the quality of audio.
[0035] In addition, the segmentation process employed by the DDSN
can be adapted to provide better performance for streaming video.
Specifically, the data segments including data from the beginning
of the streaming media presentation can be encoded as smaller
segments than those later in the streaming media presentation. This
will allow a stream to begin presentation quicker.
[0036] It should be understood that while this invention has been
explained in the context of a software operating on a personal
computer system, it could be implemented on a variety of different
platforms. For example, a wireless mobile unit, such as a cellular
telephone, could implement any of the embodiments described by
FIGS. 1-5. For example, a BREW compliant player could interface
with a DDSN access library to stream digital media to a cellular
telephone. All such systems would fall within the definition of
client computer as used above. Furthermore, while the term
streaming has been used throughout, it should also be understood
that the disclosed invention could apply to a progressive download
system equally well.
[0037] The foregoing description of the invention has been
presented for purposes of illustration and description, and is not
intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise
form disclosed. The description was selected to best explain the
principles of the invention and practical application of these
principles to enable others skilled in the art to best utilize the
invention in various embodiments and various modifications as are
suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the
scope of the invention not be limited by the specification, but be
defined by the claims set forth below.
* * * * *