HTTP traffic has grown extensively driven by the immense growth of multimedia traffic. Nowadays, it could be seen as the protocol to deploy new services and applicationsand it is also heavily used by the industry, due to the fact that it provides advanced features for modern internet architectures.
It is a content centric protocol that decouples names from addresses through DNSIt provides caching elements and middle boxes as reverse and forward proxiesIt enables scalable and flexible content deployment with content distribution, already leveraged by Content Distribution Networks (CDN)
However, there is room for improvement as many services are still using HTTP/1.0 which was specified in May 1996, or are not using all the features of HTTP/1.1, such as persistent connections or pipelining. For example, already deployed HTTP streaming solutions such as Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Apple HTTP Live Streaming, and Adobe Dynamic Streaming do not use HTTP/1.1 pipelining with persistent connections, which could increase the streaming performance by up to 30 percent. Unfortunately, there are not many proxies that support HTTP/1.1 pipelining with persistent connections, due to the Head-of-Line (HoL) blocking problem where one pending response could possibly delay a range of other responses. The problem is that the proxy has to send in-order responses, which means that earlier arriving out-of-order responses will be blocked until the response that causes the HoL blocking arrives.
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.
With the recent announcements from Apple/Netflix and Mozilla, all modern desktop browsers will soon support the proposed HTML Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) standard. EME provides a standardized approach for playing encrypted content in HTML5. One application of encrypted video is the enforcement of Digital Rights Management (DRM) on paid video content. Many content owners (film studios, sports leagues, etc.) mandate using DRM to distribute their content online.
What does all of this alphabet soup mean for users? In short, the EME standard enables publishers to deliver premium video to browsers without the need for plugins. To date, doing DRM in the browser requires the Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight or Google Widevine plugins. These plugins use non-interoperable file formats, protocols and DRM key systems, creating fragmentation. EME solves (most of) these issues, enabling premium video in HTML5 using a single file format and streaming protocol.
What would a live studio need if it worked directly on IP networks? That was the task BBC R&D set itself with a project that began in 2012 and which will hit a peak when it plays a central role in the world’s first live end-to-end IP production in Ultra HD to be conducted at the Commonwealth Games.
IP has been used by many broadcasters, BBC included, to link a studio to remote locations but the missing piece has been an IP production experience using internet protocols to switch and mix the videos.
The BBC R&D trials conducted during the CWG next month promise to do just that, while also testing the limits of network performance by shunting 4K data around the UK in a collaborative production workflow – live.
“The concept is to introduce software and IP into the overall chain so it can be used alongside existing technology like DTT,” said Matthew Postgate, controller, BBC R&D. “IP will enable us to be more flexible with services we already produce, and longer-term, to introduce new kinds of services.”
BBC R&D describes IP Studio as an open source software framework for handling video, audio and data content, composed of off-the-shelf IT components and adhering to standards like IP packet synchronisation protocol IEEE1558.
For broadcasters and high-volume producers, Amazon's Elastic Transcoder has too many limitations. For everyone else, it's an appealing, if flawed, solution.
Amazon’s Elastic Transcoder is a service that can encode files living in the Amazon cloud for delivery into the Amazon cloud. In this overview, I’ll walk you through the workflow for using the service and discuss the service’s performance, quality, and pricing. Just to set expectations, this isn’t a full out, “bang it till it breaks” competitive review as much as a “Here’s how it works, and by the way we compared some aspects to other services and here’s what we found.”
Building on a research trial during the World Cup, the BBC will use the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow to trial what it calls the world's first live Ultra HD production and transmission entirely in IP.
The BBC prides itself on pioneering media technology, and its renowned research and development team has come up trumps again with what it claims is a world first live UHD production produced and transmitted in an entirely IP domain.
The trial is planned to take place during the Commonwealth Games, a quadrennial international multi-sport event hosted in Glasgow for two weeks from July 23.
It extends the BBC's trial of UHD live feeds from the World Cup in Brazil delivered simultaneously over conventional digital terrestrial and IP networks. The first of three matches delivered in the format for these tests airs on June 28.
From Glasgow, Scotland the BBC intends to replicate the Brazil trial by sending UHD signals across DTT and IP networks in partnership with telco BT and infrastructure provider Arqiva with the feed compressed in HEVC. This will again test the quality of service to a home environment.
HEVC is among us. On January 25, 2013, the ITU announced the completition of the first stage approval of the H.265 video codec standard and in the last 1 year several vendors/entities have started to work on the first implementations of H.265 encoders and decoders. Theoretically HEVC is said to be from 30 to 50% more efficient than H.264 (especially at higher resolutions) but is it really that simple ? is H.264 so close to retirement ? This is what we will try to find. First of all let’s start with a technical analysis of H.265 compared to AVC and then, in the next blog post, we will take a look at the current level of performance that is realistic to obtain in today’s H.265 encoders.
Since the NAB conference in April, 4K workflow options have swelled. Here's a look at the hardware, recording media, and codecs needed to produce and stream 4K video.
sffmpeg is a simple cmake-based full-featured FFmpeg static build helper.
It currently works on Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and MacOSX. It has been tested the most heavily on Linux/x86_64 (Ubuntu 12.04). The helper will grab the latest versions of most FFmpeg dependencies, providing a way to effectively build, test and compare multiple static builds of FFmpeg on the same host.
New version of the HEVC/H. 265 codec offers high quality at extremely low-bandwidth video streaming
The free video codec libde265 is now available in version 0.7. libde265 is based on the video compression technology HEVC and allows a 50-percent reduction of bit rates with the same image quality. As libde265 without special hardware, video streams can be in H. 265 quality play easily on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). So, you can greatly reduce bandwidth costs for streaming and network. In addition, ultra HD includes much more than just four times the resolution to full HD. The color space and color resolution are also significantly larger — benefits the presentation at the 4K-TV regardless of pixel resolution the better dynamic range and is considered by companies in the consumer electronics industry as a driver for the next generation. With the standard-compliant version libde265 0.7, the speed has been improved up to a factor of 2. Framedropping and flexibility the frame rate also high-resolution video images even on slower processors are possible. (...)
“Over the top” (OTT) is one of the most overused and ambiguous buzzwords in our industry.
In order to understand linear video delivery in OTT models, first, you have to look at what OTT means outside of video. To mobile operators, OTT is a scary proposition. Calls, text messaging, and image messaging had been entirely within operators’ control until now, and therefore presented an opportunity for revenue. For those operators, OTT services are an almost unavoidable symptom of smartphones requiring open internet access, and bring with them many services that compete with operators’ traditional revenue models. King of all these is Skype, and it provides a clear example of what “top” the service comes “over” to earn the moniker OTT: Namely the pay wall that is the per-minute billing system of the mobile operator.
In exactly the same way I often dogmatically emphasize that “cloud” is an economic term defining the move of CAPEX to OPEX when building IT infrastructure, OTT is also an economic term first and foremost. At best, it means that the operators are able to derive data transit and bandwidth-oriented revenues for the delivery of network service on behalf of providers who otherwise charge much higher premiums to end users or sponsors. At worst, operators are loss-leading that data transit to encourage subscribers to stay with them rather than take their business to other operators. All the while, OTT services are taking revenue from network operators’ subscribers and not (necessarily) sharing any of that revenue with the network operator.
However, with this economic common denominator noted, in any specific technical context the term OTT has a range of implementation models that ensure that the cost of this data transit and bandwidth delivery itself is as profitable as possible for the network operator, whether profit is measured in operator CDN revenues or in terms of subscriber retention.
Encrypted Media Extensions provides an API that enables web applications to interact with content protection systems. Learn how to allow playback of encrypted audio and video.
With most competing browsers and the content industry embracing the W3C EME specification, Mozilla has little choice but to implement EME as well so our users can continue to access all content they want to enjoy. Read on for some background on how we got here, and details of our implementation.
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.
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.
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 Consumer Electronics Association has announced updated core characteristics for ultra high-definition TVs, monitors and projectors for the home. As devised and approved by CEA’s Video Division Board, these characteristics build on the first-generation UHD characteristics released by CEA in October 2012.
Under CEA’s expanded characteristics, a TV, monitor or projector may be referred to as Ultra High-Definition if it meets the following minimum performance attributes:
— Display Resolution – Has at least eight million active pixels, with at least 3,840 horizontally and at least 2,160 vertically.
— Aspect Ratio – Has a width to height ratio of the display’s native resolution of 16:9 or wider.
— Upconversion – Is capable of upscaling HD video and displaying it at ultra high-definition resolution.
— Digital Input – Has one or more HDMI inputs supporting at least 3840x2160 native content resolution at 24p, 30p and 60p frames per second. At least one of the 3840x2160 HDMI inputs shall support HDCP revision 2.2 or equivalent content protection.
— Colorimetry – Processes 2160p video inputs encoded according to ITU-R BT.709 color space and may support wider colorimetry standards. — Bit Depth – Has a minimum color bit depth of eight bits.
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.
Turning a basic HTML5 video player into one with enhanced playback features is surprisingly simple. Here's the code to add chapter markers, captions, and more.
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.
One of the biggest challenges for the BBC Archive is how to open up our enormous collection of radio programmes. As we’ve been broadcasting since 1922 we’ve got an archive of almost 100 years of audio recordings, representing a unique cultural and historical resource.
But the big problem is how to make it searchable. Many of the programmes have little or no meta-data, and the whole collection is far too large to process through human efforts alone.
Help is at hand. Over the last five years or so, technologies such as automated speech recognition, speaker identification and automated tagging have reached a level of accuracy where we can start to get impressive results for the right type of audio. By automatically analysing sound files and making informed decisions about the content and speakers, these tools can effectively help to fill in the missing gaps in our archive’s meta-data.
BBC R&D decided to develop these automatic meta-data extraction technologies in a way that would allow large-scale audio processing. Building them into a cloud-based platform (more on this later) allows us to work through very large archives quickly, cheaply and many times over.
H265 is a High Efficiency Video Coding player app for viewing HEVC/H.265 video files and network streams in the MKV video container format. H265 is based on the VLC library with added libde265 HEVC video decoding. In addition to HEVC/H.265 video other formats are also supported. (...)
There are a few different layers and components that are required in order for a developer to take advantage of this, however. This includes an ICE server (which wraps one or more STUN or TURN servers), a data connection to your webserver, whether it’s Ajax, WebSockets, SSE, or something else, properly encoded video (exclusively using Google’s VP8 codec), and properly encoded audio (e.g. Opus)… All of which is encrypted as SRTP (secure RTP).
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
![H265 - part I : Technical Overview [Fabio Sonnati] | Video Breakthroughs | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/jHvhgpIdqFIPjdCyyymDrTl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
