Distributing video media from content providers to content consumers often requires transmitting large amounts of data across a network. These large videos are often a challenge to process, store, and transmit. In order to allow for the playback of video content on different devices with various processing capabilities, many content providers store different versions of the same video content encoded at different resolutions and/or maximum bitrates (e.g., High Definition, and Standard Definition) and are thus able to distribute different encodings of a piece of video content to a playback device based on prevailing network conditions. Network conditions are especially important when streaming video content in real-time since network deterioration may result in a stuttering effect of the video being played back on the playback device. The size of an original piece of video content may be reduced by re-encoding the video using different encoding parameters such as (but not limited to) picture resolution (e.g., 720p, 1080p, 4 k, etc.), frame rate (i.e., 24, 30, 48, 60 frames per second, etc.), bitrate (e.g., 12 Mbps, 40 Mbps, etc.), frame size, color depth, among various other characteristics of the video.
Most standard video playback has historically been delivered at a range of between 24 and 30 frames per second. However, many of today's video games, as well as an increasing portion of TV sets are able to render video at higher rates, and often up to 60 frames per second and beyond. This increased frame rate can provide the user with a smoother, more fluid viewing experience and is generally considered to resemble real world movement. However, distributing video at such frame rates often requires a significant amount of bandwidth capacity being made available on the network.
Furthermore, media distributed by content providers to content consumers is often encoded using a variety of video compression standards that facilitate the distribution of the content across a network. Well known compression standards include H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, published by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC JTC1 Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and the newer High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, MPEG-H Part 2, developed by MPEG and VCEG, both of which are herein incorporated by reference. Video compression or video encoding typically involves compressing the amount of information used to describe the frames of video in a video sequence in order to reduce the consumption of network resources when distributing content. Media playback devices may include a video decoder used to decode an encoded video prior to playback on the device. However, video decoded from an encoded video elementary bit stream is often limited to playback at the particular encoding profile at which the video was initially encoded. In particular, the frame rate used to play back a video is typically determined based on the particular encoding profile used to encode the video and varying the playback speed of a video may effect the viewing quality of the video.