Next major releases vision

[dio-az]

Hey everyone!

I want to share my vision for the next major releases, including the key breaking changes and features I intend to introduce.

Since the first commit in mid-2014, the video streaming industry has evolved significantly. It's time to modernize the project and align it with current best practices and standards. As a result, support for older devices will be phased out. Given that the average device lifecycle is around 8 years, we'll focus on maintaining compatibility with devices released from 2016 onwards.

Initiatives

• CMAF compliance: As previously announced in Leaving fork network #18, one major goal is CMAF compliance. To achieve this, support for muxed tracks, MPEG-TS, and AES-128 encryption will be dropped.
• CBCS support: We'll expand support for CBCS, bringing the project in line with industry-standard encryption methods. CBCS is supported for both Widevine and PlayReady on devices released from 2020 onwards.
• Unified streaming formats: The HLS and DASH submodules will be consolidated. A single location will handle both streaming formats, with selection based on the requested extension. The primary distinction between locations will be the encryption scheme: cenc or cbcs.
• Simplified modes: The current three modes (local, remote, mapped) will be streamlined to support only the mapped mode, simplifying configuration and maintenance.
• Legacy PlayReady signaling removal: This can be done already via a non-documented config vod_dash_write_playready_kid. The legacy signaling and the config will be removed.
• Live streaming capability removal: Live streaming support will be dropped, allowing us to focus solely on VOD workflows for better maintainability.
• Filter removal: The filters (rate, gain, mix) will be dropped as these features introduce unnecessary complexity and are better handled during encoding or playback.

I'm looking forward to your feedback. Please leave a comment or reach out to me on video-dev Slack.

[mlevkov]

I'm working on a Rust-specific library to generate properly formatted MAP output.