System and method for encoding 360° immersive video

A media preparation system, comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• one or more persistent memory modules having program instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more processors, perform the following acts in association with one or more modules:
• receive a media input stream;
• generate a plurality of bitrate representations of the media input stream, each bitrate representation having a separate video quality that is related to a quantization parameter (QP) value used for each bitrate representation;
• encode each bitrate representation into a first coded bitstream comprising a plurality of frames with a specific Group-of-Pictures (GOP) structure, wherein each GOP starts with an intra-coded (I) frame followed by a set of frames including at least one predictive-coded (P) frame;
• and
• encoding each bitrate representation into a second coded bitstream comprising a plurality of frames with a GOP structure that has a size coextensive with a size of the GOP structure of the first coded bitstream, wherein each GOP of the second coded bitstream starts with an I-frame followed by a plurality of X-frames, each X-frame having a slice header of a P-frame and comprising blocks of intra-coded data (I-blocks).

One or more non-transitory tangible computer-readable media containing instructions stored thereon which, when executed by one or more processors of a media preparation system, effectuate a media encoding process optimized for presentation of 360° immersive video assets with minimal latency, the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising:

• a code portion for receiving a media input stream associated with a 360° immersive video asset;
• a code portion for generating a plurality of bitrate representations of the media input stream, each bitrate representation having a separate video quality that is related to a corresponding quantization parameter (QP) value used for each bitrate representation;
• a code portion encoding each bitrate representation into a first coded bitstream comprising a plurality of frames with a specific Group-of-Pictures (GOP) structure, wherein each GOP starts with an intra-coded (I) frame followed by a set of frames including at least one predictive-coded (P) frame;
• and
• a code portion for encoding each bitstream representation into a second coded bitstream comprising a plurality of frames with a specific GOP structure that has a size coextensive with a size of the GOP structure of the first coded bitstream, wherein each GOP of the second coded bitstream starts with an I-frame followed by a plurality of X-frames, each X-frame having a slice header of a P-frame and comprising blocks of intra-coded data (I-blocks).