During Mile-High Video Conference 2022 in Denver, Colorado, Ateme announced that it is extending CMAF (Common Media Application Format) usage for large-scale video delivery.
To enable such a scale-up, Ateme considered its container format options for packaging more data in its video streaming workflows. Chief among the possible formats are MP4 and MPEG2-TS. CMAF is used mostly for “last-mile” delivery to end users, while MPEG2-TS fulfills the rest of the scope.
But content delivery networks (CDNs), or content providers, are champing at the bit to replace MPEG2-TS in their workflows, for several reasons. For instance, TS packets — built for broadcast, and not optimized for streaming — require special operations to be handled by common web servers. Also, packaging data as TS requires “depackaging” it later, and repackaging it for OTT.
The use of CMAF
CMAF today enjoys broad industry backing and is widely recognized as the most suitable format for streaming and storing media. CMAF was developed in MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group), which is part of ISO/IEC international standardization, and published as ISO/IEC 23000 – 19. Proponents included Microsoft, Apple, and Disney.
Besides its streaming and packaging capabilities, CMAF features many additional advantages over proprietary formats such as ismv. For one, CMAF supports new technologies like AV1, HEVC, HDR, and VVC.
Ateme therefore chose CMAF, and decided a better packaging flow is using CMAF throughout its entire workflows.
The popular file format plays a role in an interface called CMAF Live Media Ingest, part of the DASH-IF Live Media Ingest Protocol, developed through the DASH-Industry Forum. CMAF Live Media Ingest is known in the video streaming industry as a best practice for ingesting live media to processing entities. It uses HTTP POST or PUT to transmit CMAF media objects to a receiving entity.
The partnership between Ateme and Unified Streaming enabled testing of this protocol and its features and guarantees interoperability.
The two companies completed an interoperability test together in an early stage of their collaboration to ensure that both Ateme’s TITAN Live encoder and Unified Streaming’s Origin work with the DASH-IF Live Media Ingest Protocol—and in particular, with its timed metadata controls. As a unified solution using just one file format for streaming to multiple devices, CMAF supports timed metadata and SCTE 35.
Embedded support of timestamps in streams, and support of SCTE 35 (a joint ANSI/SCTE standard), means that the CMAF Live Media Ingest Protocol allows ads to be inserted simply and dynamically.
Want to know more about this? Read more here:
https://www.unified-streaming.com/blog/live-media-ingest-cmaf