Video Breakthroughs

There is hope on the horizon. MPEG-DASH exists as an open alternative to these closed standards. Two of the three companies with proprietary closed standards have been actively involved in the formation and promotion of DASH. These efforts have been clearly successful, as DASH delivery of content is becoming more and more prevalent – for example, Netflix, Hulu and YouTube have all released versions of their content via DASH delivery. Through the efforts of Browser manufacturers, Media Source Extensions (another open standard), have become available in many browsers allowing delivery of DASH content without any additional plugins required.

Unfortunately, HLS remains the most common delivery format in the US, and Apple (the author/owner of HLS) has shown no interest in supporting MSE in their browser. A tipping point is clearly on the way, which will see a massive growth in DASH delivery. Eventually Apple will be forced to embrace the current open standard, or risk losing content which has made their platform so appealing. The irony of course is that Apple has done so much marketing touting themselves as leaders of the “open web” movement, and they are the long holdout stalling the success of this open standard.

Poor quality streaming video solutions resulted in an estimated $2.16 Billion of lost revenue in 2012 (according to the2013 Conviva Viewer Experience Report). That’s a LOT of zeros!

Since we at Microsoft Open technologies, Inc. (MS Open Tech) believe this is simply unacceptable, we’d like to share some ways in which developers can leverage open source code to ensure their own delivery of video is of the highest possible standard.

For this tutorial, we have chosen to use the dash.js player to deliver MPEG-DASH video to any browser that supports the W3C Media Source Extensions (MSE).

bitmovin's CIO Dr. Christian Timmerer regularly attends the standardization meetings of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). This is his report from the 106th MPEG meeting in Geneva, Switzerland ...

Flash Networks, the leading provider of mobile Internet optimization and monetization solutions, announced the availability of MPEG-DASH video optimization that reduces network congestion and improves the quality of experience for subscribers without manipulating video content. Flash Networks' MPEG-DASH optimization solution is part of the company's advanced video optimization solution that provides 30%-50% data reduction with no perceptible impact on video quality. Today a significant amount of YouTube traffic is delivered using the MPEG-DASH format.

Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), developed under the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), is an open international standard designed to replace multiple vendor solutions to simplify the process of streaming video to the ever-expanding variety of video viewing devices. The companies participating in the MPEG-DASH standardization include Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Samsung, and many others.  

YouTube has implemented a unique flavor of MPEG-DASH that requires more sophisticated methods of optimization than standard MPEG-DASH. Optimization solutions that do not support MPEG-DASH are unable to positively influence the delivery of video with this format and therefore are less efficient overall. Flash Networks, by using proprietary methods, provides an advanced MPEG-DASH optimization solution, enabling mobile operators to provide a more consistent, higher quality of experience to its subscribers.

"Providing exceptional video quality is a huge challenge given the varying types of mobile video traffic that need to be optimized," said Ofer Gottfried, Chief Technology Officer at Flash Networks. "At Flash Networks, we continue to invest in research to lead the industry in providing cutting edge mobile video optimization to enable mobile operators to stand out in the crowd and earn lasting subscriber loyalty."

Harmony Video Optimization enables operators to optimize video traffic based on various parameters including date and time, network congestion, and subscriber information. Due to highly efficient transcoders and a unique system architecture, Harmony Video Optimization has a low footprint, resulting in a solution that is up to five times more cost-effective than other solutions. Flash Networks does not limit its optimization to a pre-selected list of sites, but sits at the heart of the network, inspecting, identifying, and then optimizing video traffic for a superior browsing experience and maximum data reduction.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/22/5841297/flash-networks-the-first-to-boost.html#storylink=cpy

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With free-to-air broadcasters increasingly looking to hybrid solutions, combining broadcast with IP-based advanced interactive services to stay relevant, Europe’s HbbTV standard is evolving to enable a wider range of applications. Stuart Thomson reports. 

The Google Cast SDK is simple to integrate because there’s no need to write a new app. Just incorporate the SDK into your existing mobile and web apps to bring your content to the TV. You are in control of how and when you develop and publish your cast-ready apps through the Google Cast developer console. The SDK is available on Android and iOS as well as on Chrome through the Google Cast browser extension.

For non-media applications, or for more flexibility and design options, you can build your own custom receiver application using standard web technologies. With a custom receiver you can build virtually any application while including support for many streaming protocols, including MPEG-DASH, HLS, and Microsoft Smooth Streaming, all of which are available in the Media Player Library.

The text of ISO/IEC 23009-1 2nd edition PDAM1 has been approved which may be referred to as MPEG-DASH v3 (once finalized and integrated into the second edition, possibly with further amendments and corrigenda, if applicable). This first amendment to MPEG-DASH v2 comprises accurate time synchronization between server and client for live services as well as a new profile, i.e., ISOBMFF High Profile which basically combines the ISOBMFF Live and ISOBMFF On-demand profiles and adds the Xlink feature. 

Additionally, a second amendment to MPEG-DASH v2 has been started featuring Spatial Relationship Description (SRD) and DASH Client Authentication and Content Access Authorization (DAA). 

Other DASH-related aspects include the following: 

• The common encryption for ISOBMFF has been extended with a simple pattern-based encryption mode, i.e., a new method which should simply content encryption.
• The CD has been approved for the carriage of timed metadata metrics of media in ISOBMFF. This allows for the signaling of quality metrics within the segments enabling QoE-aware DASH clients.

Nicolas Weil, Digital Media Solutions Architect (France, World), provides a nice blog post about the post-IBC'13 MPEG-DASH ecosystem status which highlights also the DASH timeline referred to as "The ABR Esperanto: On the road to standardization..." (ABR stands for adaptive bit rate)

The former provides not only an excellent overview about the status quobut also an implementation directory of products and services supporting DASH (incl. our award-winning bitdash & bitcodin). The latter shows the history of MPEG-DASH from back in 2010 - when standardization started - until now ... but