Distributed DASH Datset

D-DASH – A DASH Dataset distributed over different sites for CDN-like experiments

D-DASH is a dataset of content for the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) standard from MPEG. It is mirrored over different sites at different locations to perform, e.g.,  CDN-based scientific evaluations.

Current D-DASH sites

Currently D-DASH comprises the following sites:

Registered: Mirror has been added and waits for verification.
Active: Mirror is working and provides the actual dataset version.
Inactive: Mirror has a problem and is not included in the MPDs.

Add your site to the D-DASH dataset:

We greatly appreciate new sites for the D-DASH dataset, so everybody is welcome to join D-DASH. Therefore, only a few steps are necessary:

1. Create a mirror of the dataset:
   Copy the dataset to your server and provide HTTP-access to it. The dataset has a size of approx. 85 GB and can be downloaded from our servers:
   FTP: ftp://ftp-itec.uni-klu.ac.at/pub/datasets/mmsys13/
   HTTP:  http://www-itec.uni-klu.ac.at/ftp/datasets/mmsys13/
   
   It is recommended to create a job, e.g., via wget, to keep the mirror up-to-date and the get latest MPDs also on your site. This can be done via the the following command line:
   wget -m -nH –cut-dirs=3 ftp://ftp-itec.uni-klu.ac.at/pub/datasets/mmsys13/
2. Register your dataset:
   Please register your site so that we can validate your dataset copy and add your site to the MPDs of the dataset.
   Please use our registration form at:
   http://www-itec.uni-klu.ac.at/dash/register.html
3. You are part of D-DASH!
   After the registration we check your dataset mirror and you will be notified by us. Your site will be added to the MPDs in our dataset repository and mirrored to all other sites.
   Furthermore your site will be integrated in our MPD-generation  service, which is explained more in detail in the following section.

MPD update process

The MPDs of the dataset are updated in the main-repository at Alpen-Adria University when new mirrors have been added and verified, or if an existing mirror gets inactive. These MPDs are replicated by the different mirrors in certain time intervals, however, this replication is in the responsibility of the site owners
Furthermore, we provide an MPD generation service which provides the most actual MPDs based on our mirror database. This service can act as MPD source URL for media players and responses with a standard-compliant DASH MPD. It be accessed via the URL: http://www-itec.uni-klu.ac.at/dash/ddash/mpdGenerator.php
This MPD generation service accepts HTTP GET parameters to select the different versions of the content (which is described more in detail in the following section):

• segmentlength=<n> …  n = 2, 4, 6, 10, 15 seconds of lenght for the media segments
• type={full, URLTemplate}

Example: http://www-itec.uni-klu.ac.at/dash/ddash/mpdGenerator.php?segmentlength=2&type=full

Dataset content details

We used the Red Bull Playstreets** content for this dataset. It has a lenght of 1h, 37 minutes and 28 seconds. In the following table one can see the different video and audio representations. The video encoding, ranging from 100kbps at 320×240 to 6 Mbps at 1920×1080, was done using x264 and the audio encoding, ranging from 64 kbps to 165 kbps, was done using ffmpeg. The multiplexing to ISO Base Media File Format-based DASH segments and MPD generation was done using GPAC’s MPD4Box. The standard conformance of the dataset-MPDs was validated by our MPD validation tool.
**) Special thanks to the Red Bull Media House for providing us the Red Bull Playstreets video. They own the rights of the content but the usage for scientific purposes is permitted.

#	Video (h.264)	Audio (AAC)
1	100 kbit/s,  320×240	64 kbit/s, 48 kHz, 2 channel
2	150 kbit/s,  320×240	96 kbit/s, 48 kHz, 2 channel
3	200 kbit/s,  480×360	128 kbit/s, 48 kHz, 2 channel
4	250 kbit/s,  480×360	165 kbit/s, 48 kHz, 2 channel
5	300 kbit/s,  480×360
6	400 kbit/s,  480×360
7	500 kbit/s,  854×480
8	700 kbit/s,  854×480
9	900 kbit/s,  854×480
10	1,2 Mbit/s,   854×480
11	1,5 Mbit/s,1280×720
12	2,0 Mbit/s,1280×720
13	2,5 Mbit/s,1280×720
14	3,0 Mbit/s,1920×1080
15	4,0 Mbit/s,1920×1080
16	5,0 Mbit/s,1920×1080
17	6,0 Mbit/s,1920×1080

Citation of D-DASH

We kindly ask you to refer the following paper in any publication mentioning our D-DASH dataset:
Stefan Lederer, Christopher Mueller, Christian Timmerer, Cyril Concolato, Jean Le Feuvre and Karel Fliegel, Distributed DASH Dataset, In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Multimedia Systems (ACM MMSys) 2013, Oslo, Norway, 2013.

DASH-clients for the dataset

There is a range of open-source clients available which support the playback of this dataset:
GPAC: A DASH client is provided as part of the GPAC project, available at http://gpac.wp.mines-telecom.fr or http://gpac.sourceforge.net. It’s currently supporting all MPDs of the dataset.
libdash: A DASH client library as well as test application is provided by bitmovin. Information can be found at bitmovin libdash and the source repository is available at github. Currently it supporting all MPDs of this dataset.
DASH VLC Plugin: This plugin is fully integrated in the VLC media player. More details can be found at: http://www-itec.uni-klu.ac.at/dash/?page_id=10. Currently it does not support all MPDs of this dataset, but it will be updated soon to support all MPDs.
DASH-JS: DASH-JS is a seamless integration of the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) standard from MPEG into the Web using the HTML5 video element. It can be found here: http://www-itec.uni-klu.ac.at/dash/?page_id=746. Currently it does not support all MPDs of this dataset, but it will be updated soon to support all MPDs.