Supporting Fast-Forward/Backward in MPEG based VOD Server

Abstract

One of the well known challenges in a Video-on-Demand (VOD) system is to support high-level VCR-like functions, FF/FB (Fast-forward/Backward). Decoding only I-frames within MPEG has been widely used to implement FF/FB. The requirement of large storage space to separately store I-frames is the main disadvantage of this mechanism. Also, since it ignores the characteristics of MPEG, there is inefficiency in accessing I-frames stored in disks. To alleviate these problems on supporting FF/FB, we introduce new method suing index table. By using this mechanism, we reduce additional storage space and get better performance on servicing FF/FB.