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Introduction

Foreword

GPAC has extended support for MPEG-DASH and HLS content generation and playback.

Basics concepts and terminology of MPEG-DASH are explained here and, and the same terms are usually used in GPAC for both DASH and HLS.

For more information on content generation:

For more information on content playback:

  • read the dashin filter help, used whenever a DASH or HLS session is read.
  • check the dash and HLS scripts in the GPAC test suite

Content Generation

If you generate your content with an third-party application such as ffmpeg, make sure all your video qualities use closed GOP and have the same positions for their IDR frames. When using GPAC, this is usually ensure by using the fintra option.

GPAC can be used to generate both static and live DASH/HLS content. For live cases, GPAC can expose the created files:

  • directly through disk
  • through its own HTTP server
  • by pushing them to a remote HTTP server

We recommend reading the HTTP server filter help, and looking at the DASH and HLS low latency HowTos.

Content Playback

GPAC comes with a various set of adaptation algorithms:

  • BBA0, BOLA, basic throughput (called conventional in the literature)
  • Custom throughput-based (gbuf) and buffer-based (grate) algorithms

The algorithm can be replaced by your own algo in JS or Python.

Low-Latency DASH streaming is supported, and HLS is supported starting from GPAC 2.0.

As usual in GPAC, accessing a DASH/HLS session is not reserved for playback, it can be used to feed a media pipeline for other tasks such as transcoding, encryption, recording, etc... See this howto for more information.