• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.28 no.5C
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• pp.493-505
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• 2003

A new inter-client synchronization framework for multicast media streaming is proposed employing a server-client coordinated adaptive playout control. The proposed adaptive player controls the playback speed of audio and video by adopting the time-scale modification of audio. Based on the overall synchronization status as well as the buffer occupancy level, the playout speed of each client is manipulated within a perceptually tolerable range. Additionally, the server implicitly helps increasing the time available for retransmission while the clients perform an interactive error recovery mechanism with the assistance of playout control. The network-simulator based simulations show that the proposed framework can reduce the playout discontinuity without degrading the media quality, and thus mitigate the client heterogeneity.