Help with mp4box for streaming content via HTML5 page

[commodorejim]

Hello everyone, I'm doing a multimedia course where an assignment we've been given is to prepare and deliver DASH content from a web server. I've been muddling through the steps as best I can using ffmpeg and mp4box - however, I'm not sure if what I'm doing is right primarily because I'm not sure what the outcome is supposed to be.

In short, we have three video clips to prepare of the same subject - a close, medium and wide shot. Each clip is only about 10 seconds long. The assignment brief asks us to use ffmpeg to prepare two representations, a high quality one and a low quality one, for each clip giving a total of six videos to be produced. I've done this okay but the mp4box and the DASH stuff is seriously confusing me.

The brief requires that we use mp4box to create an MPEG-DASH compatible MPD file and media segments. I've followed the steps on this site https://kvssoft.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/mpeg-dash-gop/#more-289 but I'm unsure if I've gone about it the right way. Do I create a single MPD file from ALL of the six videos I've created from ffmpeg? I've done that and I've ended up with an MPD file and approximately 20 files ending in .ms (media segment files I assume). But I'm uncertain of how to go about presenting this in an HTML5 page. My previous attempt at creating an MPD file from just one video file displayed okay in a web page but I'm getting nothing with this attempt. Am I on completely the wrong track?

Sorry for the wordy post but I wanted to give as much detail as possible to anyone who might be able to help.

[Baldrick]

You are on the wrong site...we rip streaming video.

I would try stackoverflow http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=html5+dash

[commodorejim]

Nuts... thanks for the pointer.

[slederer]

Hi,

here you can find a step by step tutorial on the MPEG-DASH content generation using MP4Box + x264: www.dash-player.com/blog/2014/11/mpeg-dash-content-generation-using-mp4box-and-x264/

However, there are also cloud-encoding services which can generate MPEG-DASH content, e.g. you can try out www.bitcodin.com.

Best,
Stefan

[commodorejim]

Thanks for that Stefan. I've managed to implement it at last. It's not perfect by a long shot (it freezes randomly) but it should be enough to get a semi-decent grade. On a side note, how difficult would it be to enable the user to switch between streams? For example, if I wanted to put three HTML buttons beneath the video labelled Wide, Medium and Close which, when clicked on, would start playing segments from that part of the mpd.

[slederer]

Switching between streams would be easy. I would recomment to use seperate MPDs for that, e.g. like here: http://www.dash-player.com/demo/video-theke/