 Your new post is loading...
DASH-IF introduces a leaner, meaner H.264/fMP4 approach, officially called DASH-AVC/264. DASH-IF has identified what it calls "interoperability points" that use AAC as the audio codec, AVC as the video codec (also known as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10), and fMP4 as the base container format. The latter is better known as the ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF). The primary interoperability point is designed around high-definition (HD) video up to 720p at the AVC Progressive High Profile.
In a panel discussion, Akamai considers why DASH-264 makes sense for the industry and tells the audience how to join those already working on it. DASH was a hot topic at the recent Streaming Media West conference, and one of the most-attended sessions was on the subset called DASH-264. During the talk, Will Law, Akamai's principal architect for the media division, explained why DASH-264 was beneficial. "The one positive driving people to a convergent solution is it's genuinely mutually beneficial," Law said. "It reduces the friction in your ecosystem when you're using something that is interoperable with other people in the delivery chain. So there's a natural incentive for people. It's the easier way to deploy DASH is to deploy something that a lot of other people are deploying. DASH-264 is a vehicle for doing that."
Contribution presented during the 104th MPEG meeting and related to the delivery of timeline for external data in MPEG-2 Transport Stream. Read the contribution here : http://goo.gl/jOlMq
Adobe's plans for Primetime highlight both the strengths and limitations of HLS and DASH, as well as the fact that Flash isn't going away anytime soon. From a technology perspective, the Primetime player will support multiple existing streaming technologies, depending upon the platform. Not surprisingly, the iOS and Android SDKs support HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), with Android support provided by a full HLS (v4) video stack that will extend HLS compatibility back to Android 2.3, and avoid many of the problems reported with Google’s own HLS implementation. The recent big news is that Adobe will add HLS support to the Primetime Player by this summer (2013), but not to the Flash Player itself. Though on the desktop, Primetime licensees could also use HTTP-based Dynamic Streaming (HDS), the only single technology that could address all platforms will be HLS. Adobe plans to add DASH to Primetime (but not the Flash Player) by the end of 2013, but this will only extend to the desktop and Android versions of Primetime, not iOS--the Primetime SDK for iOS will only support HLS. According to Ashley Still, Adobe’s director of product management for video solutions, Adobe made this decision because DASH support on iOS would require client-side transmuxing from DASH to HLS, which could cause performance issues during some playback scenarios.
Just in time for NAB, VisualOn and Discretix are announcing the release of SecurePlayer 2.0, which provides publishers with iOS and Android playback protected with Microsoft PlayReady DRM (digital rights management). The player works with MPEG-DASH, HLS, and Smooth Streaming content. SecurePlayer 2.0 combines VisualOn's OnStream MediaPlayer+ with Discretix's DRM security.
Nothing was more welcome after day 1 of EBU BroadThinking 2013 than a good night of sleep, in order to reset the tech hype counters and make some mental room for two new sessions on broadcasters’ CDNs and the latest advances of hybrid platforms. What would be the best broadcasters’ CDN architectures today, what would be their smartest (green) evolutions, would CDN-Federation standards finally bring interop reality over hopes, what would be the most advanced deployments and future of HbbTV, how it compares with YouView in the UK : day 2 agenda was looking quite attractive – and indeed the presentations were packed with valuable informations and experience feedbacks. So here is the recap of the most interesting DAY 2 presentations and a short report on some insightful demos that were playing on the EBU floor right to the conference.
At NAB, taking place in Las Vegas April 8-11, Envivio will introduce
new products and showcase new developments in next-generation
software-based video processing that optimize the convergence of
traditional TV and multi-screen services : - An Ultra HD 4K technology demonstration
- HEVC HDTV video compression, enabling up to 50 percent bit-rate savings while preserving video quality
- HEVC video streamed to a tablet in MPEG-DASH format
- TV Anytime capabilities including applications such as Catch-up and Start-over TV, highlights creation, ad insertion and nPVR
- Introduction of a new product that further personalizes the multi-screen user experience
- High efficiency MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) statistical multiplexing
- Envivio True Motion Experience, a new technology for high-quality streaming in MPEG-4 AVC format to connected TVs
- Video packaged by Envivio Halo(TM) network media processor in the Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) format, protected by Adobe Access
MPEG-DASH, and particularly the DASH264 spec, will help standardize and unify online video delivery, but the move to embrace has been slower going than the hype might suggest. It may be early days for MPEG-DASH, the format intended to unify the various adaptive bit-rate (ABR) specifications, but there are already concerns of slower than expected take-up. “There are several trials and lots of noise about MPEG-DASH, but we’ve yet to see concrete demand that point to DASH being the great unifier,” warns Bruce Devlin, CTO of AmberFin. “In fact, unless there is some operational agreement on how to use the standard between different platform operators, then it might become yet another format to support.” MPEG-DASH was ratified as an international standard in November 2011 and published as by ISO a year ago. If 2012 was a proving-in year for the technology, with a number of proof-of-concept trials, the coming year may prove critical for widespread adoption.
New end-to-end LTE broadcast solution will revolutionize video delivery in mobile networks and address growing consumer demand for TV Anywhere servicesEnables operators to efficiently launch media services over LTE with Ericsson's unique combination of three new standards: eMBMS, HEVC and MPEG DASHVerizon Wireless to introduce LTE Broadcast for entertainment and sporting events beginning in 2014Leading mobile network operator Telstra to commence trials on its live network in 2013
MPEG DASH is the biggest factor to consider -- or is it? Here are the key features to know about before making a decision. 2012 saw significant progress on several fronts for media servers. Some changes were small but important, such as naming conventions -- Adobe dropped Flash from its media server names, for instance -- while others were much more impactful for the industry going forward -- almost everyone agreeing that Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP, DASH for short, was worth supporting. In this year's Buyer's Guide, we'll take a look at a few key features you'll need to know about to make an informed decision.
The FP7 HBB-Next project (http://hbb-next.eu) presents a proof-of-concept of mutli-source multimedia synchronisation. The demo shows content from four sources.
The guidelines, published as Version 0.9, specify support for both live and on-demand services, and crucially give detail of how different encoding profiles are linked to interoperability points needed for conformance testing. One main area of clarification concerns end to end content security around the DRM and encryption. DASH unifies encryption around the Common Encryption (‘cenc’) protection scheme, to enable interoperability and avoid having to support multiple encryption methods, which would increase device processing costs. But all along DASH has avoided specifying an end to end end-to-end DRM so that vendors and service providers can choose their own. So DASH 264 provides a framework for multiple DRMs to protect a content file by adding instructions or relevant proprietary information in predetermined locations to a file that is encrypted with Common Encryption. This then specifies encryption parameters that can be applied by a scrambling system and key mapping methods based on a common key identification scheme. The point of this single key identification scheme is that it enables the same encrypted version of a file to be used by different DRMs. The new guidelines reduce the encryption parameters and associated metadata to specific use cases for VOD and live content, simplifying the overall system and again improving prospects for interoperability.
|
my presentation from cf.objective 2013 on building a DASH-264 player in HTML/JavaScript
DashCast is an application which allows users to : - transcode a live/non-live stream in multiple qualities (eg. bitrate and resolution) - segment a continuous stream in small chunks and packetize them for delivery via Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) standard.
Now that virtually all major players support Apple's HLS, the shortcomings of that de facto standard may lead to more widespread implementation of MPEG-DASH.
Adobe made news several weeks ago, when it announced the impending inclusion of Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) in the Primetime player, part of Adobe's video publishing ecosystem for big media companies. Yes, we all agree, it's a big deal for HLS, both from the standpoint of players—all major players, except the standalone Flash Player without the Primetime SDK on top, now have plans to include HLS—as well as a win for Apple in creating ade facto standard out of a proprietary solution. But it may be too much too late, and could spell the beginning of the end of HLS as we know it. Wait, don't I mean too little too late? No, in this instance, I think HLS's popularity, as it is thrust out on to the global broadcast stage without yet fully putting on its costume (stabilized "recommendation" spec) may be its undoing.
Fraunhofer IIS and Unified Streaming (USP) have begun a collaboratin designed to extend the ecosystem for HE-AAC MPEG-DASH streaming, enabling broadcasters and service providers to deliver the best possible MPEG-DASH (dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP) streaming experience for video and audio-only services. The two parties say that HE-AAC has emerged as the global standard for broadcasting and streaming multimedia content, including Internet radio or Web TV, digital radio and digital television. It is natively supported by Android Jelly Bean, iOS, Windows 7/8, Mac OS, the leading HTML5 browsers. Therefore, says Fraunhofer and USP, service providers in many cases only need to encode their content in a single audio format, HE-AAC Multichannel.
Our open source tool suite consists of several components. On the client-side we provide libdash and the DASH plugin for the VLC media player (also available on Android). Additionally, our suite also includes a JavaScript-based client that utilizes the HTML5 media source extensions of the Google Chrome browser to enable DASH playback. Furthermore, we provide several server-side tools such as our DASH dataset, consisting of different movie sequences available in different segment lengths as well as bitrates and resolutions. Additionally, we provide a distributed dataset mirrored at different locations across Europe. Our datasets have been encoded using our DASHEncoder, which is a wrapper tool for x264 and MP4Box. Finally, a DASH online MPD validation service and a DASH implementation over CCN completes our open source tool suite.
Geneva in late March doesn’t feel as wild as a Las Vegas boulevard, but still there was a reasonable amount of gaming excitement at the EBU headquarters, where several events were following each other, beginning with a DASH Interoperability Forum meeting which was closely followed by the BroadThinking event, where industry actors and broadcasters come to show off their latest implementations advances and/or share the results of their real-life deployments or research studies. A good way of managing the transition between TV Connect and NAB… Where Broadcast meets Broadband : that’s the promise of the EBU’s hybrid event which flies between industry competition, standardization efforts and broadcasters’ realpolitik – all wrapped in a warm and funny ambiance provided by the various speakers and the EBU team gently lead by Bram Tullemans whom I’d like to thanks personnally here for the presentation invitation (kudos also to Filka, Peter and Eoghan for the organization!). Actually the 2013 edition was a major success because it allowed the participants to get a rather good idea of the general trends of the industry, and at the same time to go deep in technology when needed, while having opportunities to discover edge tech demos on the lobby attending the conference room. It’s virtually impossible to render a complete report of everything that has been said or shown there during two days by so many quality speakers (including OnlineVideoFrenchSquad group distinguished members Lionel Bringuier [Elemental Technologies], Martin Boronski [M6 Web], Thierry Fautier [Harmonic] and Nicolas Weil[Challenge2Media] – Les 4 Mousquetaires /poke @sfaure ), but I’ll nevertheless try to provide you here a selection of relevant informations that will help you grasp the trends and prepare the upcoming tradeshows efficiently… So let’s start with DAY 1 recap !
Our presentation from the media web symposium 2013 in Berlin on the open source landscape around MPEG-DASH as well as on cloud-based services for MPEG-DASH
We're close to broadly available HD streaming which could trigger mass adoption of connected TV. Alex Zambelli gives the story so far.
It's all about DASH: Adoption is moving at a rapid pace, as industry insiders see a strong need to get DASH implemented in the field in the coming year. The Pantos spec, as it is known in the industry, is a series of working drafts for HLS submitted by two Apple employees as an information draft for the Internet Engineering Task Force. As of the time of this article, the Pantos spec is currently at informational version 10. Much has changed between the early versions and the most recent v10 draft, but one constant remains: HLS is based on the MPEG-2 Transport Streams (M2TS), has been in use for almost 2 decades, and is deployed widely for varied broadcast and physical media delivery solutions. In that time frame, however, little has changed for basic M2TS transport stream capabilities. For instance, M2TS still lacks an integrated solution for digital rights management (DRM). As such, all HLS versions cannot use "plain vanilla" M2TS, and even the modified M2TS used by Apple lacks timed-text or closed-captioning features found in more recent fragmented elementary stream streaming formats. Yet Apple has been making strides in addressing the shortcomings of both M2TS and the early versions of HLS: In recent drafts, the HLS informational draft allows for the use of elementary streams, which are segmented at the time of demand rather than beforehand. This use of elementary streams means that one Achilles' heel of HLS -- the need to store thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of small segments of long-form streaming content -- is now eliminated. Google, with its Android mobile operating system platform, has adopted HLS for Android OS 4. Some enterprising companies have even gone back and created HLS playback for earlier versions of Android OS-based devices.
Expway has announced the launch of the 5th generation of its Mobile Broadcast software, the eMBMS solution, at the Mobile World Congress 2013. The solution enables Mobile Operators to broadcast any content, live or on-demand, over their LTE network. About the eMBMS Solution : The eMBMS Device Middleware controls the eMBMS LTE modem, receives and decodes the eMBMS streams. It stores or displays the received content through a separate Video Player. The eMBMS DASH Video Player resides next to the Middleware and is used to play all unicast and broadcast video streams compatible with the newly adopted DASH standard. It uses devices hardware acceleration for best performance. The eMBMS BM-SC Server handles the service layer at the eMBMS network, allowing the Carrier to push files and delivers live TV streams, on its LTE network, by using broadcast.
Designed to support next-generation GPU and CPU architectures, release 2.0 is now available for Elemental’s suite of products for video processing, packaging and streaming live and on-demand video. The release brings together a host of features for multiscreen video delivery to create a unified platform providing substantial benefit to Elemental customers: •Increased performance – With next-generation processor architectures and an optimized video pipeline, Elemental systems offerdouble the performance and density of previous generation solutions in asingle RU footprint. Increased throughput allows customers tobring multiscreen assets to market more quickly and in a smaller footprint than ever before. •Comprehensive codec support – Support for multiple codecs running simultaneously on a single platform provides customers with aseamless migration path from existing video delivery standards tofuture compression technologies. Elemental solutions offer MPEG-2,H.264, VC-1 and HEVC / H.265 encoding with patented compression technology as well as support for JPEG 2000 and ProRes mezzanineassets. •Current and future standards – In addition to support for common video streaming protocols such as Adobe RTMP and HTTP DynamicStreaming (HDS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming and Apple HTTP LiveStreaming (HLS), Elemental software supports newly emergingtechnologies including MPEG-DASH, Ultraviolet and 4K Ultra HD. •Advanced encryption and protection – Secure content with a variety of integrated technologies including Civolution forensic watermarkingfor both live and VOD content, Adobe Flash Access, Apple Sample-AES and Microsoft PlayReady as well as DRM solutions from NDS, Verimatrix and Widevine. •Increased monetization – Support for ESAM dynamic ad insertion and Nielsen ID3 tagging give pay TV operators a path to multiscreenvideo delivery and a way to deepen audience engagement andinteraction. Media companies can also take advantage of the Adobe Primetime ecosystem for ad insertion as well as ad integration solutions from BlackArrow and mDialog. •Augmented audio options – With release 2.0, robust support for audio encoding is available across the Elemental product line, includingsupport for DTS Express, Dolby Digital, Dolby E and Dolby DigitalPlus. In addition, release 2.0 features support for Dolby Digital Plus inApple HLS and Microsoft Smooth Streaming, raising the bar for audio fidelity in the streaming market. •Accessibility features – Audio loudness management lets broadcasters adhere to the CALM Act and new captioning features, includingcaption burn-in, SMPTE-TT and SCC file creation let content creatorsadhere to captioning requirements coming into effect later this year.Elemental makes it easy to caption content originally aired on television and destined for delivery over the Internet.
The transport of HEVC using DASH seems to be a hot topic in media, see for example here, here, here, andhere. In this blog post I'd like to highlight technical changes in order to support HEVC over DASH. The immediate response would be that no updates of DASH are required to support HEVC as DASH is coding format agonistic but the devil is in the detail. In fact, the core DASH specification [ISO/IEC 23009-1:2012] doesn't require any updates but the file format and transport stream standards are currently amended. This may impact DASH as its segment formats are based on the file format and transport stream.
|
![Chelsio Delivers StreamEngine – Media Streaming Solution Dramatically Increases Video And Content Delivery Performance [PR] | Video Breakthroughs | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/ChstcLJ9nkm92Ip598t2Xzl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ){kind=small}
