Multiple aggregated control URIs for RTSP
draft-einarsson-mmusic-rtsp-macuri-02

Abstract

RTSP defines the setup and control for on demand and live streaming media sessions, which are delivered via an external media transport protocol such as RTP/UDP. RTSP does not define a mechanism to change the content during an on-going streaming session. Such a mechanism improves the streaming experience when a user browses through multiple offerings on a single streaming site. This document describes several methods to improve content switching. The basic principle is to re-use already established transport sessions (e.g. RTP/UDP sessions) and negotiate new content to be delivered on the existing sessions. If additional transport sessions are necessary, those sessions are established separately. This principle of re-using the RTSP control and transport sessions decreases the content switch delay to a large extent and improves the end-user experience. The present document defines a mechanism for switching to new content, both when the client already has the content description available and when it does not. This document additionally considers switching of a single media stream in a session, when several alternative media components are available. For instance, the content may provide several alternate audio tracks in different languages to be played with a single video stream. The principle of Fast Content Switching and Start-up is also defined in 3GPP TS 26.234 [3GPP.26.234] for RTSP 1.0 [RFC2326].

Authors

Thorsten Lohmar
Torbjorn Einarsson

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