Overview: Streaming delivery

Streaming delivery connects media representations, transport requests and player buffers across a playback timeline.

Delivery can expose a file progressively or supply a sequence of media segments. Adaptive selection, discontinuities and live timing add further relationships to that sequence.

This area explains those transport arrangements and the buffering or seeking behavior around them. Keeping delivery separate from conversion helps identify whether the player lacks incoming data or the server has not yet produced it.

  • HTTP file delivery
    HTTP file delivery exposes media bytes through progressive access or requests for particular ranges.

  • Segmented streaming
    Segmented streaming presents media as a sequence of addressable intervals whose timing and initialization information let a player retrieve and assemble the programme.

  • HLS delivery
    HLS delivery connects playlists with the media segments and timeline information they describe.

  • Adaptive bitrate streaming
    Adaptive bitrate streaming selects among suitable representations of the same programme timeline to balance presentation quality, delivery capacity and playback reserve.

  • MPEG-DASH
    MPEG-DASH describes timed media representations and their addressable segments in a Media Presentation Description that a player uses for HTTP delivery and adaptation.

  • Common Media Application Format (CMAF)
    CMAF constrains segmented media tracks and their relationships so compatible delivery systems can use shared addressable media objects for timed presentation and switching.

  • Low-latency streaming
    Low-latency streaming reduces the delay between an event and its presentation by coordinating encoding, early media availability, delivery and player buffering.

  • Live streams and on-demand streams
    Live and on-demand streams differ in when programme media exists and remains available, shaping timeline discovery, seeking, pausing and the meaning of the live position.

  • Stream discontinuities
    A stream discontinuity marks a change in media timing or configuration that requires the player to interpret the following interval in a new continuity context.

  • Buffering
    Buffering retains media ahead of use, with continuity, readiness and consumption rate determining how much playback reserve the stored data actually provides.

  • Seeking during streaming
    Seeking resolves a requested media-time destination through available ranges, resource access and decoding dependencies before presentation resumes.

References