How to create a MPD file of MPEG-DASH to play a webm video?

Question

I'm following this demo which uses mediaSource API and MPEG DASH standard to play a .webm video. This is the MPD file used:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<MPD
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns="urn:mpeg:DASH:schema:MPD:2011"
  xsi:schemaLocation="urn:mpeg:DASH:schema:MPD:2011"
  type="static"
  mediaPresentationDuration="PT888.05S"
  minBufferTime="PT1S"
  profiles="urn:webm:dash:profile:webm-on-demand:2012">
  <Period id="0" start="PT0S" duration="PT888.05S" >
  <AdaptationSet id="0" mimeType="video/webm" codecs="vp8" lang="eng" width="720"      height="306" subsegmentAlignment="true" subsegmentStartsWithSAP="1" bitstreamSwitching="true">
  <Representation id="1" bandwidth="534144">
    <BaseURL>mevq_logo_720x306_0250k_int-150-150.webm</BaseURL>
    <SegmentBase indexRange="29052226-29054708">
      <Initialization range="0-229" />
    </SegmentBase>
  </Representation>
  <Representation id="2" bandwidth="1078766">
    <BaseURL>mevq_logo_720x306_0500k_int-150-150.webm</BaseURL>
    <SegmentBase indexRange="56003676-56006200">
      <Initialization range="0-229" />
    </SegmentBase>
  </Representation>
  <Representation id="3" bandwidth="1745140">
    <BaseURL>mevq_logo_720x306_0750k_int-150-150.webm</BaseURL>
    <SegmentBase indexRange="83686040-83688577">
      <Initialization range="0-229" />
    </SegmentBase>
  </Representation>
  <Representation id="4" bandwidth="2295403">
    <BaseURL>mevq_logo_720x306_1000k_int-150-150.webm</BaseURL>
    <SegmentBase indexRange="111588024-111590567">
      <Initialization range="0-229" />
    </SegmentBase>
  </Representation>
  <Representation id="5" bandwidth="3797938">
    <BaseURL>mevq_logo_720x306_1500k_int-150-150.webm</BaseURL>
    <SegmentBase indexRange="166960740-166963291">
      <Initialization range="0-229" />
    </SegmentBase>
  </Representation>
  <Representation id="6" bandwidth="6418657">
    <BaseURL>mevq_logo_720x306_2000k_int-150-150.webm</BaseURL>
    <SegmentBase indexRange="222165200-222167753">
      <Initialization range="0-229" />
    </SegmentBase>
  </Representation>
</AdaptationSet>
<AdaptationSet id="1" mimeType="audio/webm" codecs="vorbis" lang="eng" audioSamplingRate="41000" subsegmentStartsWithSAP="1">
  <Representation id="7" bandwidth="115479">
    <BaseURL>evq_vorbis_128kbps_cues-5sec_tracks-2.webm</BaseURL>
    <SegmentBase indexRange="11944509-11947524">
      <Initialization range="0-4501" />
    </SegmentBase>
  </Representation>
</AdaptationSet>

Does anybody know how to obtain/calculate the numbers 'SegmentBase indexRange' and 'Initialization range' for any video?

Solution

indexRange contains Segment Index Box (sidx). It is basically metadata fragment that contains information about the fragments the player should request when downloading the file. This is a quote from the spec:

"indexRange specifies the byte range that contains the Segment Index in all Media Segments of the Representation. The byte range shall be expressed and formatted as a byte-range-spec as defined in RFC 2616, Clause 14.35.1. It is restricted to a single expression identifying a contiguous range of bytes."

sidx box is described in HERE and a parser can be found HERE and HERE(from dash.js project)

Initialization - According to spec:

"specifies the URL including a possible byte range for the Initialization Segment."

Hope it helped!

Comments

[Stefan Vasiljevic]

After following those links I still could not find how Initialization.range and SegmentBase.rangeIndex are calculated. Can you explain or give a link to an example? THX!

[inbaly]

Start with downloading the SegmentBase.rangeIndex, and view its binary data: curl -o <fileName> -r <1500-8000(SegmentBase.rangeIndex)> <url_of_mp4.mp4> You can use You can download/clone the dash.js project, there is an example in the code itself.

[Stefan Vasiljevic]

So you are saying that I should download the first chuck and read it and see where it ends and then populate the MPD with those values?

[inbaly]

@StefanVasiljevic Yes.you will need to analize the sidx metadata.