Improved support for video streaming in Virtual Browser

During the summer a section of the R&D team was tasked with taking a closer look at video support in Virtual Browser.

Up to now Virtual Browser (like most remote display/desktop technologies) managed video display by sequentially transfering a series of static images from the server to the client, a process which consumes an excessive amount of bandwidth, puts an excessive load on the server, and delivers a frequently unsatisfactory result for the end user (jerky films, interruptions, and the like).

This wasn’t very satisfactory for us either. We attach a lot of importance to the user experience, so we decided to take a closer look at the problem of streaming and remote display technology. Thibault, one of our R&D engineers, analyzed the situation in depth, leading to us developing and implementing two modifications to our solution which will have a significant positive impact on user of experience of video streaming:

• Dynamic selection of lossy or lossless image compression algorithms according to the image type detected (photo/graphic, static/dynamic).
• On-the-fly identification of dynamic zones (especially videos) and the generation of an MPEG streaming channel to optimise transfer, instead of transfering sequential static images.

These changes are currently under test, and we expect to roll them out with release 2.1 at the end of the month.