Experiments with Digital Video Playback

In this paper we describe our experiments on digital video applications, concentrating on the static and dynamic tradeoffs involved in video playback. Our results were extracted from a controlled series 272 tests, which we rain in three stages. In this first stage of 120 tests, we used a simple player-monitor tool to evaluate the effects of various static parameters compression type, frame size, digitized rate, spatial quality and keyframe distribution. The tests were carried out on two Apple Macintosh platforms at the lower end a Quadra 950, and at the higher end, a Power PC 710080. Our quantitative metrics included average playback rate, as well as the rates variance over one-second intervals.