A couple of times a year Brightcove has an internal hackweek where engineers work on any project they’d like. In the latest hackweek (2014-07-14) Tom Johnson decided to see if he could get DASH supported in as many places as possible, by combining a few of the existing DASH player implementations with Video.js.
MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) is a streaming format similar to Apple’sHTTP Live Streaming (HLS). It allows you to provide multiple versions of a video at different bitrates, and then the player can switch between those versions depending on the user’s bandwidth (which is more complicated than you might think).
The two DASH playback implementations used were Dash.js and Dash.as. They were combined using video.js’s playback tech architecture, which means you can include plugins and custom skins and they’ll work the same with either playback method.
Could MPEG-DASH be the one online video format to replace all others? In a Streaming Forum 2014 panel on the much-hyped format heavyweights includingCisco, Akamai, the BBC, and Qualcomm offered a shared hope that the industry could standardize behind DASH.
“To me, it’s the young Turk,” said Kevin Murray, system architect for Cisco, comparing DASH to HLS. Broadcasters are slowly centralizing on both options, he noted. DASH, however, lacks a maturity. The format still needs ubiquity (including the ability to play on iOS devices) and integration (DASH-IF needs to act as a gatekeeper). Keep it simple, Murray advised: A unified DASH is easier to deploy and test, and offers a better user experience.
ExoPlayer is a newly open sourced media player built on Android's low level media APIs. It supports DASH and SmoothStreaming adaptive playback, and is used by Google's YouTube and Play Movies applications. This talk discusses the design of ExoPlayer, its use of Android's low level media APIs, and how you can use, extend and customize ExoPlayer in your own video applications.
Subscription VOD company Hulu is taking the lead on DASH adoption, and is already using it for all Google Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV streaming. Hulu Lead Software Developer Baptiste Coudurier explained why those moves are just the begnning.
One of the world’s most famous performance institutions, the Vienna State Opera (VSO), is to stream what is claimed to be the world’s first live production in 4K video coding (HEVC).
Delivered via MPEG-DASH over the Internet for global viewing on Samsung Smart TVs and on special public display in the opera house, the broadcast is set for 7pm CET on 7 May with a production of Verdi’s Nabucco starring Plácido Domingo in the title role will. It will be streamed for global viewing on UltraHD smart TVs as well as to a 65" Samsung UltraHD TV at the opera house.
At the conference this year, Adobe is demonstrating major product innovations, including MPEG-DASH and the new ultra high definition television (UHDTV) standard, which will enable media companies to deliver content across 4K enabled SmartTVs and other IP-connected devices. New capabilities in Adobe Primetime include:
- Cloud ad insertion offers maximum device scale and enables content monetization on any connected device without requiring client code for ad insertion. The technology supports all TV content and is compatible with HLS to deliver any ad to any viewer on any screen. The existing client-side ad insertion capability, which ensures that broadcasters don’t have to tap into large server capacities to reach large audiences, combined with cloud ad insertion, makes Primetime the industry’s only delivery and format agnostic solution for content monetization. It also offers maximum flexibility and scale for companies that sell TV ads across devices. Primetime cloud ad insertion is available today
- 4K support ensures that Primetime customers can deliver the highest resolution content to the latest set of digital home devices allowing consumers to enjoy stunning viewing experiences. Primetime leverages the latest UHDTV hardware capabilities to ensure fully optimized performance. Support for 4K is being previewed at NAB and is expected to ship in 2014
- Primetime 2.0 also offers support for the new MPEG-DASH streaming format in its core video engine layer. Support of the new industry standard gives programmers and operators the flexibility to deliver consistent video experiences across devices using their preferred format. MPEG-DASH support will ship by the end of 2014.
- In addition to desktop operating systems, SmartTVs, Android and iOS devices, Primetime 2.0 now supports XBox 360 gaming consoles and Roku devices.
MPEG-DASH is slowly but surely becoming the main competitor to HLS, driven by adoption by major players and intrinsic strengths. Here's who's using it now, who's going to be soon, and what challenges still need to be addressed.
Last year at the European Broadasting Union’s BroadThinking conference, the DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) conducted a survey of 13 major European broadcasters on MPEG-DASH adoption. At the time, about three-quarters of them projected to have DASH deployed by end of first half of 2014. Primary sources of concern for the broadcasters were the availability of DASH enabled clients and packaging tools. One year later, we haven’t seen many broadcasters deploying DASH in production, but the traction seems to have shifted to over-the-top (OTT) content distributors and operators.
So, who are the actors already in production or close to production with DASH? What are the remaining roadblocks for its adoption? How will DASH be positioned against existing Adaptive Bitrate technologies in the coming months? What is the exact status of the DASH standard and its most promising evolutions? What are the upcoming initiatives aiming at fostering DASH adoption? Let’s get a handle on where DASH is today, and where it’s headed.
Windows Azure Media Services team is very pleased to announce beta version of Microsoft Smooth Streaming plugin for OSMF with WAMS MPEG-DASH support. Using Smooth Streaming OSMF plugin, you can add Smooth Streaming and Windows Azure Media Services on-demand MPEG-DASH(beta) content playback capabilities to existing OSMF and Strobe Media Playback players and furthermore build rich media experiences for Adobe Flash Player endpoints using Windows Azure Media Services you use today to target Smooth Streaming playback to other devices like Win8 store apps, browser and so on. This version of the Smooth Streaming plugin includes the following capabilities and works with OSMF 2.0 APIs:
At booth SU1210 at the 2014 NAB Show, Harmonic will demonstrate the world’s first end-to-end HEVC solution for delivering live 2160p60 10-bit Ultra HD content. In collaboration with companies including Broadcom Corporation, Sigma Designs, Vigor Systems, and ViXS, the Harmonic broadcast workflow supports the delivery of live, linear playout and VOD Ultra HD content to consumer-grade TVs and set-top boxes (STBs).
Highlights include:
The first consumer-grade demonstration showing live streaming of Ultra HD content, based on Harmonic’s market-leading HEVC encoding technology and the XCode 6400, a 2160p60 10-bit SoC chip from ViXS Systems, used to decode and display live content to a UHDTV via HDMI 2.0.
An end-to-end solution for delivering 2160p60 Ultra HD VOD content over IP networks featuring Harmonic’s ProMedia® Xpress high-performance transcoder with HEVC support, sent by the WFS™ file-based workflow engine to a MediaGrid shared storage system, and streamed using the ProMedia Origin stream packager and server to consumer devices in the MPEG-DASH format.
A 2160p60 Ultra HD linear playout workflow featuring Harmonic’s WFS, ProMedia Xpress, and MediaGrid solutions integrated with an Advertio transport stream playout platform from Vigor Systems, to deliver an Ultra HD linear channel.
An Ultra HD 120-Hz broadcast workflow powered by Harmonic ProMedia Xpress frame-rate upconverted on Sigma Designs’ high-performance and cost-effective 120-Hz Ultra HD TV platform. Sigma Design’s Ultra HD TV platform is comprised of an Ultra HD TV SoC that enables HEVC decoding (STV7603) and an innovative motion judder removal and frame-rate conversion SoC (FRC8000) for providing the best picture quality on large screen displays.
The first standard-compliant live 4K Ultra HD broadcast workflow, powered by Harmonic ProMedia Xpress transcoding and decoded by Broadcom’s BCM7445 Ultra HD video decoder solution.
For the last two years, I have been working to extend the capabilities to of the Origin Server for Window Azure Media Services. In January of 2013, Windows Azure Media Services (WAMS) became generally available as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. Just over a year later, it would stream the largest live sporting event in history – millions of concurrent users and over 10,000 hours of unique content over the 16-day Sochi Winter Olympic Games. This article describes the capabilities of Microsoft’s origin server, as well as the evolution of the product in the last two years to meet today’s demanding streaming media space.
Since 2012, YouTube has been trying to reduce dramatically the time it takes for a video to start from the moment you press play. Flash Networks (Mobixell at the time) was among the first to detect a new proprietary implementation called sliced bread.
The matter might seem trivial, but internal research from Google show that most users find a waiting time exceeding 200ms unacceptable for short videos.
YouTube has been developing a proprietary protocol, based on HTTP adaptive streaming DASH to decrease latency and start time for its videos.
Dash.as runs MPEG-DASH video on any device supporting Adobe Flash. It was designed from the ground-up to be lightweight with performance in mind. Hosted as a GitHub project, it is available as an open-source video player written in Adobe ActionScript. We provide everything you need to get started and invite you to help refine the application.
A significant step in the road to Ultra High Definition TV services has been taken with the approval of the DVB-UHDTV Phase 1 specification at the 77th meeting of the DVB Steering Board. The specification includes an HEVC Profile for DVB broadcasting services that draws, from the options available with HEVC, those that will match the requirements for delivery of UHDTV Phase 1 and other formats. The specification updates ETSI TS 101 154 (Specification for the use of Video and Audio Coding in Broadcasting Applications based on the MPEG-2 Transport Stream).
Another specification to gain approval from the Steering Board was the MPEG-DASH Profile for Transport of ISO BMFF Based DVB Services over IP Based Networks. This specification defines the delivery of TV content via HTTP adaptive streaming. MPEG-DASH covers a wide range of use cases and options. Transmission of audiovisual content is based on the ISOBMFF file specification. Video and audio codecs from the DVB toolbox that are technically appropriate with MPEG-DASH have been selected. Conditional Access is based on MPEG Common Encryption and delivery of subtitles will be XML based. The DVB Profile of MPEG-DASH reduces the number of options and also the complexity for implementers. The new specification will facilitate implementation and usage of MPEG-DASH in a DVB environment.
The Hippo Media Server is a simple, standalone HTTP server designed to simplify the delivery of MPEG DASH and Smooth Streaming media. MPEG DASH and Smooth Streaming are both protocols for HTTP-based adaptive streaming. With adaptive Streaming, a media presentation is served to streaming clients as a sequence of small media segments (each segment containing typically 2 to 10 seconds of audio or video). Each segment is accessed over HTTP with an individual URL. In order to serve an adaptive streaming presentation with a regular HTTP server like Apache, Nginx or other populare HTTP servers, one needs to split the original media files into small individual files, one for each segment, so that they can be accessed through separate URLs. This can be very difficult to manage. The Hippo Media Server implements a simple URL virtualization scheme: instead of mapping each URL to a file in the server's filesystem, each URL consists of a pattern, which is parsed by the server when it handles a request, and from which it can locate the appropriate portion of a file in the filesystem. This way, a single media file containing the media data for the segments can be represented as discrete URLs.
The BBC has started its Ultra-HD closed trials from the World Cup tournament in Brazil. The BBC Research & Development department has partnered with Arqiva for the trials that will use the latest DVB-DASH profile IP.
The UHD production will be received in the UK from an H.264/AVC satellite contribution feed. For both DTT and IP we will be using Main Profile HEVC to compress the video to distribution bitrates that can be sustained within a DVB network and a super-fast broadband line. The frame rate being used is 59.94Hz as that is the standard in Brazil.
The DTT trial will be transmitted from Crystal Palace (London), Winter Hill (Manchester) and Black Hill (Glasgow). The transmissions are just starting up now. As we are using the same T2 modulation parameters that are used for HD multiplexes the signal can be received on current consumer equipment, I’m not aware of any equipment which can decode the video. Though some existing HD models may tune the service and decode the audio.
The stream will use the latest DVB-DASH profile and is geo-IP locked to the UK only.
The DASH Talks, a gathering of DASH supporters, compared notes on the standard's advancement, and highlighted the work being done.
“More important than anything else, DASH enables interoperability,” said Iraj Sodagar, a principal multimedia architect at Microsoft and the DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) president. “The whole idea of DASH was gathering the best deployed streaming technologies in the market, adding more to it, and creating a standard for interoperability."
Our streaming server team continues to invest in MPEG-DASH across both On-Demand and Live scenarios. Last year we launched our On-Demand DASH preview and contributed reference streams to the DASH-IF site — these enable player development across the ecosystem. We are actively working with contributors (including Microsoft Open Technologies) to the DASH-IF JavaScript player to ensure interoperability of Live streams produced in Media Services with the DASH.js player framework.
We are happy to announce that our MPEG-DASH support for on-demand streaming through our streaming origin services is now GA. It is included in the cost of an Origin reserved unit. Live streaming with MPEG-DASH is still in private preview and available only to Live preview customers at this time.
OSMF Player Beta with MPEG-DASH Support
The Media Services client team is announcing a beta version of a Flash based OSMF plugin with MPEG-DASH support. Using the OSMF plugin, you can add both Smooth Streaming and on-demand MPEG-DASH (beta) content playback capabilities to existing OSMF and Strobe Media Playback players and furthermore build rich media experiences for Adobe Flash Player endpoints using Media Services. The player does not yet support live streaming of DASH content, but we are working on that too.
Microsoft Smooth Streaming Client SDK 2.5 with MPEG-DASH Support
The PlayReady team, working in conjunction with the Media Services team announced the availability of the Microsoft Smooth Streaming Client 2.5 with MPEG DASH support. This release adds the ability to parse and play MPEG DASH manifests in the Smooth Streaming Media Engine (SSME) to provide a Windows7/Windows8 and MacOS solution using MPEG DASH for on-demand streaming scenarios. Developers that wish to move content libraries to MPEG-DASH now have the option of using DASH in places where Silverlight is supported.
With the rise of MPEG-DASH and the NAB-related announcements from both Microsoft and Adobe on the topic, we sat down with both companies to discuss the status of DASH support as well as their legacy ABR protocols, Smooth Streaming and HDS.
In late 2012, Microsoft release the specification “DASH Content Protection using Microsoft PlayReady,” which explained how to use PlayReady with Common Encryption and MPEG-DASH. In June 2013, Windows Azure Media Servicesadded the support for MPEG-DASH as a new Dynamic Packaging output. At IBC 2013, Microsoft officially announced a new PlayReady version supporting HTML5, Encrypted Media Extensions, as well as new SDKs for iOS and Android. Their recent NAB 2014 announcements show how much work has been done under the hood to support DASH on the maximum number of platforms. We put a few questions to the Windows Azure Media Services team—namely senior digital media architect Kilroy Hughes, principal program manager lead John Deutscher, program manager for dynamic packaging Nick Drouin and program manager for client SDKs Cenk Dingiloglu. Here’s what they told us.
Now Azure Media Services allow you to deliver Http-Live-Streaming (HLS) and Smooth Streams encrypted with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (using 128-bit encryption keys). Media Services also provides the key delivery service that delivers encryption keys to authorized users.
Azure Media Services also provides a Microsoft PlayReady license delivery service. PlayReady is a full-featured content access protection technology developed my Microsoft that uses Digital Rights Management (DRM). It protects a content media stream during playback by using a license server that provides the decryption key needed to decrypt the media stream.
Firstly, you need to pre-encrypt Smooth Streaming file with PlayReady License, by providing us License Acquisition URL, Key ID and Content Key. You could follow this MSDN article to use Azure Media Encryptor to encrypt the Smooth Streaming file. As a output, you could further package the encrypted Smooth Streaming into HLS and DASH (See how here). You could also define how the license could be authorized to your user. Similar to AES dynamic encryption, we enable Token/IP/Open authentication service.
Which platform/devices that PlayReady SDK covers?
Azure Media Services can be used to encode, download, or stream Smooth Streaming or MPEG DASH content encrypted with PlayReady. For consuming PlayReady encrypted content, client SDKsand the PlayReady Porting Kit are available under commercial licensing terms. (PlayReady clients for Windows 8.1 Store Apps can be built using the free SDK located HERE). These client-side SDKs are not part of this preview.
Don't get lost in NAB and go straight to the DASH-powered booths!
See the map of all DASH products demonstrations, showcased by 25 companies from the DASH Industry Forum. Registrations are still open for the DASH Talks event and the DASH Networking Reception.
Usually when creating a video, all that is needed is to encode it using a codec (for example H.264 or HEVC). However, to transmit a video using MPEG-DASH, an extra segmentation step is required. Typical encoders do not provide this step and produce content which is not compatible with DASH.
Our dash.encrypt project provides a solution. It takes encoded video and audio from an array of different formats and repackages them as valid DASH streams. It also generates the required manifest which is the table of contents for the stream.
Hosted as a GitHub project, it is available as an open-source application written in Java. We provide everything you need to start creating DASH content and invite you to help refine the program.
Smooth Streaming and MPEG-DASH Client 2.5 SDK enables you to build rich IIS Smooth Streaming experiences for both on-demand and live IIS Smooth Streaming for Silverlight and Windows Phone 8 applications. In addition, MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) for Silverlight on-demand scenarios using the Live Profile support has been added to the 2.5 release.
MPEG DASH is now a supported feature, so developers that wish to move content libraries to DASH have the option of using DASH in places where Silverlight is supported. The existing SSME object model forms the basis of DASH support in the SSME. DASH concepts like Adaptation Sets and Representations have been mapped to their logical counterpart in the SSME. Adaptation Sets are exposed as Smooth Streams and Representations are exposed as Smooth Tracks. Existing Track selection and restriction APIs can be expected to function identically for Smooth and DASH content. In most other respects, DASH support is transparent to the user and a programmer who has worked with the SSME APIs can expect the same developer experience when working with DASH content.
This solution demonstrates a DASH stream playing in Adobe Flash. The license key is exchanged between DRMtoday's cloud service and the Unified Streaming Platform. Live or on-demand content is encrypted on-the-fly and delivered for protected playback to any device supporting the Adobe Access DRM.
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