Encoding and Storing Only Once: The Road to CMAF Adoption

Abstract

The spectacular growth in video streaming consumption over the past decade has relied on Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) adaptive streaming (HAS), implemented by a variety of standards linked to several competing technological ecosystems. To serve this fragmented market and reach a heterogeneous set of target devices, operators have to decline their services into many flavors, leading to a complex video delivery infrastructure with many redundancies. As an extensible format for encoding and packaging, the Common Media Application Format (CMAF) standard emerged in 2016 from a collaborative industry effort to simplify and streamline HTTP-based streaming media, bringing the promise of encoding and storing the media only once, as an additional step toward video streaming sustainability. From the standard publication to its fulfillment of promises, CMAF is gradually overcoming a set of technological and economic challenges. This article details the primary considerations for its implementation, including device rollout, encryption scheme and low-latency support, and also evaluates the infrastructure footprint reduction for a typical operator.