Overview of the DASH-HLS interoperability specification: 2021 edition

While CMAF has provided the foundation for the interoperable packaging of streaming media, today it is still common practice to produce media specific to the delivery formats utilized by a service provider. As DASH and HLS are the delivery formats the industry has converged towards, a survey of deployments for DASH and HLS revealed two leading reasons for divergent packaging: media packaging requirements that were misaligned across formats and a non-trivial amount of tribal knowledge required to address media for common deployment use-cases in each format. To address the divergence of CMAF packaged media in DASH and HLS, the CTA WAVE project created a working group, the DASH-HLS Interoperability group, responsible for researching and transcribing the additional packaging and delivery format requirements necessary to achieve interoperability. Using industry guidance, the group defined a set of common streaming use-cases and published the interoperability details for the first four usecases in the 2021 Edition of the DASH-HLS Interoperability Specification (CTA-5005) [1]. The use-cases in this edition are: Basic On-Demand and Live Streaming, Low Latency Live Streaming, Encrypted Media Presentations, and Presentation Splicing. This talk will provide an overview of the specification outputs for these initial use-cases including the defined packaging and addressing requirements and any identified missing interoperability points that represent opportunities for further research. Beyond the current specification, this talk will highlight the new use-cases and work currently being prioritized for the next edition and how interested entities can get involved with the development.