EGOP: A Server-Side Enhanced Architecture to Eliminate End-to-End Latency Caused by GOP Length in Live Streaming

Over the past few years, video live streaming has gained immense popularity as a leading internet application. In current solutions offered by cloud service providers, the Group of Pictures (GOP) length of the video source often significantly impacts end-to-end (E2E) latency. However, designing an optimized GOP structure to reduce this effect remains a significant challenge. This paper presents two key contributions. First, it explores how the GOP length at the video source influences E2E latency in mainstream cloud streaming services. Experimental results reveal that the mean E2E latency increases linearly with longer GOP lengths. Second, this paper proposes EGOP (an Enhanced GOP structure) that can be implemented in streaming media servers. Experiments demonstrate that EGOP maintains a consistent E2E latency, unaffected by the GOP length of the video source. Specifically, even with a GOP length of 10 s, the E2E latency remains at 1.35 s, achieving a reduction of 6.98 s compared to Volcano-Engine (the live streaming service provider for TikTok). This makes EGOP a promising solution for low-latency live streaming.