DASH it all?

MPEG-DASH has been ratified by 24 national bodies, a topic covered in a recent StreamingMedia.com article and also at StreamingLearningCenter.com (run by Jan Ozer).

Now that we, as an industry, have reached a tentative agreement on how to handle adaptive streaming over HTTP through consistent parsing of manifest files (MPD or Media Presentation Description in MPEG DASH parlance) there's another question remaining: what's next?

The next two steps, as noted in both the Streaming Media article and our own white paper, is the acceptance of a common file format and a common encryption scheme (CENC).

Following ratification of CENC and adoption of the common file format, there's a huge need to deal with interoperable, DASH-compliant players. In fact, this element may be the biggest challenge of all—getting encoded content to consistently play back on every device or platform.

It's the same issue we faced during the two reports (1, 2) on Android handset and tablet video playback, where core services of Android didn't necessarily translate into consistent playback of RTSP or even YouTube videos on a variety of playback devices from the same handset manufacturer.

So Transitions is issuing a challenge, as part of our 2012 Q1 Best Workflows testing: bring us your DASH-compliant player, whether it's in beta or gold master, and we'll put it through its paces against other DASH-compliant players, using consistent fMP4 and M2TS content. Here's looking at you, Qualcomm, Ericsson and even Microsoft and Adobe...

The Laws Of Gravity Do Not Apply...

When the AT&T and T-Mobile USA merger was announced back in March 2011, the reaction was different between two rivals: Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint, declared it would be bad for competition, while the CEO of Verizon Wireless, Lowell McAdams, said it was inevitable.

McAdams went so far as to say, at an analyst meeting in September, that it would happen just like a particular force of nature always occurs. He spoke of it in the past tense, according to Boy Genius Report, as if it had already occurred:

“I have taken the position that the AT&T merger with T-Mobile was kind of like gravity. It had to occur."


Apparently the rules of gravity no longer apply, as AT&T last week withdrew its application to the FCC to merge with T-Mobile USA.

Is it a dead matter? Not yet. See this StreamingMedia.com article on the nature of the issues facing AT&T.

Why are fMP4 and MPEG-DASH so important?

Quote from a white paper Transitions just completed on fragmented MP4 (fMP4) and MPEG-DASH:

Proponents say that the Common File Format (CFF) and Common Encryption (CENC) scheme will represent two important steps toward large-scale online video distribution via adaptive delivery of fragmented elementary streams.


Since CFF can also be used outside of the bounds of UltraViolet, significant interoperability may also exist between UltraViolet disc-based playback and online video platforms, in much the same way that the DVD Forum’s published specifications for DVD playback guaranteed interoperability between DVD players. It’s not out of bounds to think of CFF as the DVD standard for the web.


To get a better understanding of the power of fragmented MP4, first look at the sidebar in the white paper on "combinatorial complexity" for which Netflix contributed a real-world example. Even without CFF and CENC, Netflix is proving the case that fMP4 scales much better than the HLS approach (with a far lower asset management impact).

The white paper has been several months in the making, starting first as separate concepts by two key companies in the streaming space: Adobe Systems and Microsoft Corporation. Each has their proprietary solutions, but both are committed to seeing fragmented MP4 (fMP4) offer a potentially viable alternative to legacy streaming solutions.

After several meetings, both companies chose to jointly work with Transitions to create a white paper noting the benefits of fMP4 and, to a slightly lesser extent, the potential benefits of MPEG-DASH (a proposed standardization of dynamic streaming over HTTP that I mentioned in a prior blog post).

Special thanks to Microsoft and Adobe for providing financial resources and access to subject-matter experts, who spent time expanding on key concepts and the ever-changing nature of fragmented MP4 and the MPEG-DASH ratification process.

The full white paper can be found here.

[Addition: Adobe and Microsoft have both published blog posts, outlining their support for fMP4 and mentioning reasons for working together: Adobe's Kevin Towes blog post  Microsoft's Chris Knowlton blog post]

Flashless for Mobile? Not Exactly

There's quite a bit of confusion about the impact of Adobe's decision (or what exactly the decision was) in regards to Flash Player of Mobile. Rightfully so, as the company didn't spell out its intent to its users at the same time it pushed out news to analysts during the 9 November analyst day briefing.

Besides the StreamingMedia.com article titled "Into (not so) thin AIR" (self-plug) there are two Adobe blog posts that may help explain where the company is going...or at least what it plans to still support:

Pritham Shetty's "Adobe Flash for Premium Video" blog post spells out what's in and what's out.

Mike Chambers's blog post, "Clarifications on Flash Player for Mobile Browsers, the Flash Platform and the Future of Flash" does a good job explaining the "why" of unsustainable growth in complexity Adobe faced in the wild-west atmosphere surrounding Android forking.

We conjectured, in the "thin AIR" article posted on StreamingMedia.com, that Android forking complexities could cause Adobe's costs to run rampant. It was helpful to get confirmation a few hours later, when Mike posted his Clarifications blog post, that Adobe had indeed seen this Great Wall of Android that it had to scale, and chosen a wiser path.

DASH of this, DASH of that...

It's apparent that MPEG-DASH is getting traction—or at least attention—if attendance at the 2011 StreamingMedia West show's panel on MPEG-DASH is any indicator.

It wasn't just standing-room, as alluded to in the StreamingMedia.com article, but was sitting-room only. It's been quite some time since I've seen this level of interest in a topic.

A few notes that didn't make it into the article:


MPEG-DASH will never define a codec, but with DASH-264 there's a move to use an H.264 codec in an MP4 container with a common file format (CFF) and common encryption (CENC).... There's also a possibility of adding DASH-264 into the HTML5 standard, since W3C requires a codec to be considered in HTML5 but MPEG-DASH itself is codec agnostic.


Interesting note about who has been participating and who has not:


Apple has been participating in MPEG-DASH from the beginning; they have contributed actively. We've not seen Google participating in DASH, but our codec agnostic approach means that WebM could be used within DASH (we can already do with profiles around M2TS).


What about royalties? An audience member's question got this reply:

From a licensing standpoint, there is a requirement to notify ISO of their intent to license; Qualcomm and Cisco have announced they'll offer royalty-free since HTTP adaptive streaming has been done for a number of years but to get to a standard we need to see a path forward to royalty-free licensing.

Netflix or Blockbuster: Do Either Offer Total Access?

When it comes to online streaming of premium content, it appears that less is less instead of more.

Netflix stumbled badly, announcing this week that 800,000 subscribers left the service last quarter—over 200,000 more than the company had predicted as its "worst case" scenario. Part of the stumble was an assumption that customers would pay the same amount for online video access to a limited number of movies as they would for a much broader library of DVDs delivered by mail.

I covered this topic two days ago in an online article for StreamingMedia.com, a newsletter and magazine for which I have freelanced for a number of years. After the article was published, a radio station in Seattle, KOMO, requested a phone interview which I did on the 26th.

In addition, the editor of StreamingMedia.com, Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, was also asked to be part of a section on Netflix on PBS Newshour show this evening.

To say this topic is hot would be an understatement, and Eric did a good job bringing to light—in a public forum—what we've often said on StreamingMedia.com: the online premium content world is still nascent and needs to grow to match the expectation (or hype) that many in our industry have pushed when trying to make streaming inventories equal to offline availability.

There's a need for a consolidated approach to online video libraries, ideally through a broader offering of content by a single provider; in the meantime, I'll also cover another approach that indexes what's available on multiple sites. Look for that article in a few weeks.

2011 Streaming Media Europe: Challenges for Android Video Delivery

In between trips to Nigeria and Ghana (for pro-bono work) I was able to speak at today's Streaming Media Europe 2011 conference, on the topic of Android video delivery.

The session presentation is available for download and StreamingMedia.com may eventually post the session video.

The presentation was a walk through the findings we reported in two white papers on the battery impact and performance impact of Flash Player for Mobile 10.1 (first report) and Flash Player for Mobile 10.2 / 10.3 (second report).

The findings, however, were the same for both tests: the native applications don't work nearly as consistently for video playback, and the impact of Flash Player for Mobile on battery life is a small price to pay for consistency in delivery (as in the actual ability to use hardware acceleration to play back full-screen, full-motion video).

2012 Q1 Best Workflows

Transitions has been hard at work on several continents (four and counting) over the past three months, after publishing attributed results for one company that participated in the 2011 Q1 Best Workflows research report.

Within the next two months, we expect to release invitations for the follow-on 2012 Q1 Best Workflows report, based on interest expressed by a number of companies. Stay tuned for more details.

2011 Q1 Best Workflows: Elemental Technologies

In December 2010, we published the 2010 Best Workflows report, a generic version of testing Transitions performed for a number of transcoding and live encoding hardware/software solutions. The report mentioned a few invited companies, but did not detail any one particular participant.

Elemental Technologies has requested that their findings be published, as the company did exceptionally well in a number of categories. The report, labeled as 2011 Q1 Best Workflows: Elemental Technologies, containing the same test results from the December 2010 final report, reveals a company hitting its stride on several fronts.

Flash Player 10.2 for Android Handsets and 10.3 for Motorola Xoom Tablet

Devices powered by the Android OS are gaining in popularity, with first quarter 2011 sales of Android-powered devices far outstripping those of Apple's iOS and Research In Motion's BlackBerry OS.

Yet the success brings with it a major issue—OS forking and code modification—inherent to open-source operating systems. The biggest area where this divergence can be viewed (or not viewed, as the case my be) is in the area of media consumption.

Our most recent report, titled The Right Fit? Video Playback Performance on Android Handset and Tablet Devices Using Adobe Flash Player 10.2 and 10.3 delves into the question of Adobe's Flash Player as a potential universal player for various media types on Android phones and tablets. 

We found that Adobe Flash Player seems to be progressing, alongside advances in the Android OS itself, to a point where we're seeing full frame-rate, high-quality playback on a number of devices.

While this sounds like a no-brainer, our last set of tests found few devices capable of playing 24 frame per second (fps) content at 24 fps, let alone playing back traditional video content at the 29.97 fps required to match fluid television playback.

Yet the past two months have significantly upped the ante: Adobe Flash Player 10.3 on the Motorola Xoom tablet was able to match native content's frame rates (both 24 and 29.97 fps) once the Motorola Xoom was upgraded to Android OS 3.1. This is an increase of 10-15% in frames-per-second playback, compared to Flash Player 10.2 on Android 3.0.1—the original shipping Xoom operating system.

In addition, the Motorola Atrix handset, which contains the same dual-core Tegra 2 processor and GPU, turned in impressive results. The Samsung Galaxy S also improved over its results in our initial tests of six Android handsets and now takes advantage of hardware acceleration for decoding.

The combination of an updated Android OS and an updated Adobe Flash Player seems to provide a much more consistent media experience for the average user.