[vlc-devel] MPEG-DASH and the likes

[Robert Forsman]

On Wed, 28 Aug 2013 22:59:40 +0200
Frédéric Yhuel <yhuelf at gmail.com> wrote:

> But before I do, I'd like to know if it is worthwhile doing so. Smooth
> Streaming doesn't seem to be used much in a DRM-free context, but
> maybe I'm wrong. And what do you think of MPEG-DASH? Is it going to
> take off? Is there a point for VLC users?

There is a DASH Industry Forum with members like Ericsson, Harmonic,
Microsoft, Netflix, VisualOn and many others.

http://groupspaces.com/dashif/

Since the DASH standard is so wide and open (there's no good reason you
can't have a DASH manifest with OGG vorbis segments) the DASH-IF makes
it their job to narrow things down like

* pick specific codecs, profiles, and resolutions
* decide best practices for ad insertion/substitution
* decide how DRM should be done
* develop test media (which usually is not licensed for distribution outside the group)

The members of this group are mostly companies who sell client and
server software and hardware.  Some of the individual people have the
DASH-IF participation as their primary job assignment from their
employer.


There are companies working to deploy DASH (Netflix is already using
DASH-style segments, but not DASH .MPDs).  Unfortunately, most of the
entities spending resources to deploy DASH are doing it to make money,
so what they will eventually deploy will be protected by DRM, and VLC
probably won't play it.

A recent mailing list thread was to organize a virtual plugfest at IBC,
so the various client and software makers could route media between
booths and brag about how "You can see the output of our encoder
playing on software in these other booths.  See how well we
interoperate?"

There is a possibility that a secondary ecosystem will arise with
content that could be rendered by free software like VLC but the folks
investing resources in it right now are doing so because they
anticipate a monetary return on that investment.