Video Breakthroughs

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. 

The actual OTT market uses Adaptive Bit Rate video format over HTTP (Smooth Streaming, HTTP Dynamic Streaming, HTTP Live Streaming and MPEG-DASH soon) to deliver the content. Although it excludes the DRMs system which is a big topic in itself, here is an overview of the different formats available for each platform and of the different solutions (self-hosted, CDN, Cloud) to handle it.

DVEO, the broadcast division of Computer Modules, Inc. (CMI), is now shipping their new continuous streamer and VOD (video-on-demand) media server. The Infinity Streamer™ streams multiple HLS video files, plus audio files, from the on board .5 TB drive, with scheduled playlists. DVEO will demonstrate the new system at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, September 7-11, at Stand 2.A54.

The Infinity Streamer is a streaming server for stored content. Input can be individual files or multiple files. File types supported are H.264 ts, flv, H.264 ps, .mov, VC-1 (.wmv), mkv, and others. The Infinity Streamer also supports loopable playback. The system has been tested to be compatible with the latest Adobe®, Wowza®, and Real Helix™ servers, and many CDNs.

Digital Rapids announces powerful new enhancements to the Digital Rapids Stream software for the company's StreamZ, StreamZHD and Flux encoding solutions. The same new capabilities are also available as applicable in the StreamZ Live family of live streaming encoders and the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager automated, high-volume file transcoding software. Recently-released or soon-to-ship new features include enhanced Closed Caption support for adaptive bit rate streaming and support for automated advertising insertion when streaming live with Adobe Flash technologies.

Recently released new software updates add support for Closed Captions with Microsoft IIS Smooth Streaming technology and with HTTP Live Streaming through the optional iPhone/iPad encoding module.

Expanded support for the use of cueing messages with Adobe Flash technologies enhances content owners' ability to monetize their media across multiple screens in fully automated workflows. Cueing messages in live input sources, commonly used in broadcast operations, can be detected to automate the insertion of cue points into outputs targeting Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR applications. Additional new features in the latest software updates include DFXP timed text file creation from live and file-based sources.

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.

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.

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.

An FFmpeg-based live and offline encoder that outputs HLS archives or publishes to IIS Live Smooth Streaming endpoints.

Can capture video from DirectShow cameras and audio equipment.

Can use a plugin framework for audio and video pre-processing (includes a tone-detector and a watermark plugin).

Uses the FFmpegControl library for encoding and decoding.