Server-initiated client-side just-in-time stitching in ABR streaming

Presented by Kevin Yu, Prabhu Hosur, Spencer Shanson of PlutoTV.

In a typical server-side stitching, complete manifests ( i.e., playlists in HLS and MPD in MPEG-DASH) of different media or Ad content are stitched in a back-end stitcher service. In recent just-in-time stitching technology that is being adopted by the industry, only reference links of media or Ad manifests are provided to the client and actual stitching of the manifests happens on the client side. The reference links for the manifests may be located at different locations.

This presentation shows the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of using Interstitials in HLS and X-link in MPEG-DASH for just-in-time stitching on client side. The HLS and MPEG-DASH just-in-time stitching requires client-side implementation support. This presentation walks through the additional software modules that are integrated to support just-in-time stitching in Safari browser, Apple device simulator, DASH.js player etc.

This talk was presented at Demuxed '23, a conference for video nerds in San Francisco featuring amazing talks like this one.