5 ms·

Ultra-High-Definition Quality Experience with MPEG-DASH Streaming

10 points by slederer 11y ago

est 11y ago
DASH is cool in terms of technology and cost saving, but as end-user experience, it's super bad. I just wanna constant quality, full length video buffered to my local and after that I start watching uninterrupted! Who the fuck want to watch a 720p video and then BOOOOOM 240p. It's really frustrating.
- ossreality 11y ago
  Sure. It's a way better experience to have to stop and buffer every 10 seconds.
- hroi 11y ago
  Some people would prefer scaled down quality instead of stuttering when watching eg. live streams or on-demand movies (and not have to wait for download to finish).
  - est 11y ago
    For live streams, yes, DASH might be super useful. For on-demand movies, I'd like to it to buffer in advance to a sufficient time length, but don't stutter anymore after that! Hell I would rather lag for 1 minute for live videos instead of DASH. I think it boils down to personal habits, would you endure constant small problems with quicker progress, or would rather suffer at the start and enjoy a smooth ride afterwards.
    - slederer 11y ago
      DASH is just a format, you can use it however you like, e.g. prebuffering parts or the whole movie ... that's the flexibility of an open standard. there are a lot of open source players or also commercial ones such as www.dash-player.com, which exactly enable this flexibility.
  - rasz_pl 11y ago
    and other people live outside of third world US internet bubble and have access to modern networks with no data caps and decent speeds.
- sp332 11y ago
  That's not streaming, that's a download.
  - est 11y ago
    Watch a partially downloaded video while downloading is called streaming.
    - sp332 11y ago
      Streaming is real-time. A download is to watch later. The main difference in use is that you want a stream to have very low latency, while for a download it doesn't matter much. YouTube in particular has been working on time-to-first-frame and reducing stutter. If it takes 5 minutes to start watching a YouTube video, or to skip around in a video, people will leave and do something else because that is super frustrating. YouTube will use the highest video quality that your connection can handle in real-time. Edited first bit for clarity
      - Retric 11y ago
        Streaming does not need low latency connections. 1 second is huge latency, but a trivial wait time. Second, buffering full HD quality for 30+ minutes while watching HD video is well within most users’ internet connection capability. Streaming services rarely do this to save money when a user stops watching mid video. But, at a technical level your connection should get saturated until the video is fully downloaded instead of micro managing a tiny buffer. Finally, for services like Netflix with limited catalogs and the ability to predict what a user is going to watch they can easily download 1 minute and in HD from the most popular videos ahead of time or a smaller buffer for every video. This would create a fairly massive buffer to start with, but again nobody does this. PS: Hulu apps can even go further and pre download commercials.
        sp332 11y ago
        Why download more than you need? If your connection can handle real-time HD video then it won't stutter. est is talking about when you force YouTube to playback a higher resolution (under the gear icon) and then it doesn't buffer enough to keep up when you play.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  afaik nothing stops you just downloading highest quality DASH stream, I do it with YT everyday.
- slederer 11y ago
  If you use a good player with a good adaptation algorithm, it will not switch from 720p to 240p ... of course poor players will do that. But a good player implementation will rather switch from 720p @ 3 Mbps to 720p @ 1.5 Mbps if the bandwidth decreases ... so the quality difference is really limited but the video continues to play without a problem. we've a lot of demos where you can try it out yourself at http://www.dash-player.com/demo http://www.dash-player.com/demo as well as http://www.bitcodin.com/live-streaming/ http://www.bitcodin.com/live-streaming/
reamworks 11y ago
Is it better than Pied Piper, which is lossless?
- hroi 11y ago
  A more relevant comparison would be HLS, Apple's HTTP Live Streaming tech, which works really well but is not very widely supported.
  - jawngee 11y ago
    There are over 800 million devices that support it.
  - asendra 11y ago
    Works really well, yes, but it has considerable latency for real time video.
  - slederer 11y ago
    Apple's HLS and MPEG-DASH share the same design principles. One big benefit of MPEG-DASH is that it is supported natively within HTML5 using the HTML5 Media Source Extentions. However, today HLS and MPEG-DASH are used in common.
- aeturnum 11y ago
  DASH is more a protocol to make many quality levels available in a single stream in a standard way. You could add a Pied Piper track to a DASH stream easily.

10 points by slederer 11y ago

est 11y ago

DASH is cool in terms of technology and cost saving, but as end-user experience, it's super bad. I just wanna constant quality, full length video buffered to my local and after that I start watching uninterrupted! Who the fuck want to watch a 720p video and then BOOOOOM 240p. It's really frustrating.

ossreality 11y ago
Sure. It's a way better experience to have to stop and buffer every 10 seconds.
hroi 11y ago
Some people would prefer scaled down quality instead of stuttering when watching eg. live streams or on-demand movies (and not have to wait for download to finish).
- est 11y ago
  For live streams, yes, DASH might be super useful. For on-demand movies, I'd like to it to buffer in advance to a sufficient time length, but don't stutter anymore after that! Hell I would rather lag for 1 minute for live videos instead of DASH. I think it boils down to personal habits, would you endure constant small problems with quicker progress, or would rather suffer at the start and enjoy a smooth ride afterwards.
  - slederer 11y ago
    DASH is just a format, you can use it however you like, e.g. prebuffering parts or the whole movie ... that's the flexibility of an open standard. there are a lot of open source players or also commercial ones such as www.dash-player.com, which exactly enable this flexibility.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  and other people live outside of third world US internet bubble and have access to modern networks with no data caps and decent speeds.
sp332 11y ago
That's not streaming, that's a download.
- est 11y ago
  Watch a partially downloaded video while downloading is called streaming.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Streaming is real-time. A download is to watch later. The main difference in use is that you want a stream to have very low latency, while for a download it doesn't matter much. YouTube in particular has been working on time-to-first-frame and reducing stutter. If it takes 5 minutes to start watching a YouTube video, or to skip around in a video, people will leave and do something else because that is super frustrating. YouTube will use the highest video quality that your connection can handle in real-time. Edited first bit for clarity
    - Retric 11y ago
      Streaming does not need low latency connections. 1 second is huge latency, but a trivial wait time. Second, buffering full HD quality for 30+ minutes while watching HD video is well within most users’ internet connection capability. Streaming services rarely do this to save money when a user stops watching mid video. But, at a technical level your connection should get saturated until the video is fully downloaded instead of micro managing a tiny buffer. Finally, for services like Netflix with limited catalogs and the ability to predict what a user is going to watch they can easily download 1 minute and in HD from the most popular videos ahead of time or a smaller buffer for every video. This would create a fairly massive buffer to start with, but again nobody does this. PS: Hulu apps can even go further and pre download commercials.
      - sp332 11y ago
        Why download more than you need? If your connection can handle real-time HD video then it won't stutter. est is talking about when you force YouTube to playback a higher resolution (under the gear icon) and then it doesn't buffer enough to keep up when you play.
rasz_pl 11y ago
afaik nothing stops you just downloading highest quality DASH stream, I do it with YT everyday.
slederer 11y ago
If you use a good player with a good adaptation algorithm, it will not switch from 720p to 240p ... of course poor players will do that. But a good player implementation will rather switch from 720p @ 3 Mbps to 720p @ 1.5 Mbps if the bandwidth decreases ... so the quality difference is really limited but the video continues to play without a problem. we've a lot of demos where you can try it out yourself at http://www.dash-player.com/demo http://www.dash-player.com/demo as well as http://www.bitcodin.com/live-streaming/ http://www.bitcodin.com/live-streaming/

reamworks 11y ago

Is it better than Pied Piper, which is lossless?

hroi 11y ago
A more relevant comparison would be HLS, Apple's HTTP Live Streaming tech, which works really well but is not very widely supported.
- jawngee 11y ago
  There are over 800 million devices that support it.
- asendra 11y ago
  Works really well, yes, but it has considerable latency for real time video.
- slederer 11y ago
  Apple's HLS and MPEG-DASH share the same design principles. One big benefit of MPEG-DASH is that it is supported natively within HTML5 using the HTML5 Media Source Extentions. However, today HLS and MPEG-DASH are used in common.
aeturnum 11y ago
DASH is more a protocol to make many quality levels available in a single stream in a standard way. You could add a Pied Piper track to a DASH stream easily.