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;
• encoding each bitrate representation into a plurality of phase-encoded bitstreams, each phase-encoded bitstream that belongs to a particular bitrate representation comprising a number (N) of frames with a specific Group-of-Pictures (GOP) structure having a GOP size (p), wherein the number of the plurality of phase-encoded bitstreams equals the GOP size and, for each pth phase-encoded bitstream, N frames are encoded as follows:
• at least a first frame is encoded as an intra-code (I) frame;
• and
• a frame at a frame position i, for 2≤i≤N, that satisfies {i Mod (GOP size)}=p is encoded as an X-frame that has a slice header of a predictive-coded (P) frame and comprises blocks of only intra-coded data (I-blocks);
• otherwise, that frame is encoded as a P-frame having blocks of at least one of predictive-coded data (P-blocks) and intra-coded data (I-blocks) with a P-slice header.

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 quantization parameter (QP) value used for each bitrate representation;
• a code portion encoding each bitrate representation into a plurality of phase-encoded bitstreams, each phase-encoded bitstream that belongs to a particular bitrate representation comprising a number (N) of frames with a specific Group-of-Pictures (GOP) structure having a GOP size (p), wherein the number of the plurality of phase-encoded bitstreams equals the GOP size and, for each pth phase-encoded bitstream, N frames are encoded as follows:
• at least a first frame is encoded as an intra-coded (I) frame;
• and
• a frame at a frame position i, for 2≤i≤N, that satisfies {i Mod (GOP size)}=p is encoded as an X-frame that has a slice header of a predictive-coded (P) frame and comprises blocks of only intra-coded data (I-blocks);
• otherwise, that frame is encoded as a P-frame having blocks of predictive-coded data (P-blocks) with a P-slice header.