One document matched: draft-ietf-avtext-splicing-for-rtp-13.xml


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  <front>
    <title abbrev="RTP splicing">Content Splicing for RTP Sessions</title>

    <author fullname="Jinwei Xia" initials="J." surname="Xia">
      <organization abbrev="Huawei">Huawei</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>Software No.101</street>

          <city>Nanjing</city>

          <region>Yuhuatai District</region>

          <code>210012</code>

          <country>China</country>
        </postal>

        <phone>+86-025-86622310</phone>

        <email>xiajinwei@huawei.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <date day="14" month="November" year="2012" />

    <workgroup>AVTEXT Working Group</workgroup>

    <abstract>
      <t>Content splicing is a process that replaces the content of a main
      multimedia stream with other multimedia content, and delivers the
      substitutive multimedia content to the receivers for a period of time.
      Splicing is commonly used for local advertisement insertion by cable
      operators, replacing a national advertisement content with a local
      advertisement.</t>

      <t>This memo describes some use cases for content splicing and a set of
      requirements for splicing content delivered by RTP. It provides concrete
      guidelines for how an RTP mixer can be used to handle content
      splicing.</t>
    </abstract>
  </front>

  <middle>
    <section title="Introduction">
      <t>This document outlines how content splicing can be used in RTP
      sessions. Splicing, in general, is a process where part of a multimedia
      content is replaced with other multimedia content, and delivered to the
      receivers for a period of time. The substitutive content can be provided
      for example via another stream or via local media file storage. One
      representative use case for splicing is local advertisement insertion,
      allowing content providers to replace the national advertising content
      with its own regional advertising content prior to delivering the
      regional advertising content to the receivers. Besides the advertisement
      insertion use case, there are other use cases in which splicing
      technology can be applied. For example, splicing a recorded video into a
      video conferencing session, or implementing a playlist server that
      stitches pieces of video together.</t>

      <t>Content splicing is a well-defined operation in MPEG-based cable TV
      systems. Indeed, the Society for Cable Telecommunications Engineers
      (SCTE) has created two standards, <xref target="SCTE30"></xref> and
      <xref target="SCTE35"></xref>, to standardize MPEG2-TS splicing
      procedure. SCTE 30 creates a standardized method for communication
      between advertisements server and splicer, and SCTE 35 supports splicing
      of MPEG2 transport streams.</t>

      <t>When using multimedia splicing into the internet, the media may be
      transported by RTP. In this case the original media content and
      substitutive media content will use the same time period, but may
      contain different numbers of RTP packets due to different media codecs
      and entropy coding. This mismatch may require some adjustments of the
      RTP header sequence number to maintain consistency. <xref
      target="RFC3550"></xref> provides the tools to enabled seamless content
      splicing in RTP session, but to date there has been no clear guidelines
      on how to use these tools.</t>

      <t>This memo outlines the requirements for content splicing in RTP
      sessions and describes how an RTP mixer can be used to meet these
      requirements.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="System Model and Terminology">
      <t>In this document, an intermediary network element, the Splicer
      handles RTP splicing. The Splicer can receive main content and
      substitutive content simultaneously, but will send one of them at one
      point of time.</t>

      <t>When RTP splicing begins, the splicer sends the substitutive content
      to the RTP receiver instead of the main content for a period of time.
      When RTP splicing ends, the splicer switches back sending the main
      content to the RTP receiver.</t>

      <t>A simplified RTP splicing diagram is depicted in Figure 1, in which
      only one main content flow and one substitutive content flow are given.
      Actually, the splicer can handle multiple splicing for multiple RTP
      sessions simultaneously. RTP splicing may happen more than once in
      multiple time slots during the lifetime of the main RTP stream. The
      methods how splicer learns when to start and end the splicing is out of
      scope for this document.</t>

      <figure>
        <artwork>

   +---------------+
   |               | Main Content +-----------+
   |   Main RTP    |------------->|           | Output Content
   |   Content     |              |  Splicer  |--------------->
   +---------------+   ---------->|           |
                      |           +-----------+
                      |
                      | Substitutive Content
                      |
                      |
            +-----------------------+
            |   Substitutive RTP    |
            |       Content         |
            |          or           |
            |   Local File Storage  |
            +-----------------------+


            Figure 1: RTP Splicing Architecture

</artwork>
      </figure>

      <t>This document uses the following terminologies.</t>

      <t><list style="hanging">
          <t hangText="Output RTP Stream"><vspace blankLines="1" />The RTP
          stream that the RTP receiver is currently receiving. The content of
          output RTP stream can be either main content or substitutive
          content.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Main Content"><vspace blankLines="1" />The multimedia
          content that are conveyed in main RTP stream. Main content will be
          replaced by the substitutive content during splicing.<vspace
          blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Main RTP Stream"><vspace blankLines="1" />The RTP
          stream that the splicer is receiving. The content of main RTP stream
          can be replaced by substitutive content for a period of time.<vspace
          blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Main RTP Sender"><vspace blankLines="1" />The sender of
          RTP packets carrying the main RTP stream.<vspace
          blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Substitutive Content"><vspace blankLines="1" />The
          multimedia content that replaces the main content during splicing.
          The substitutive content can for example be contained in an RTP
          stream from a media sender or fetched from local media file
          storage.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Substitutive RTP Stream"><vspace blankLines="1" />A RTP
          stream with new content that will replace the content in the main
          RTP stream. Substitutive RTP stream and main RTP stream are two
          separate streams. If the substitutive content is provided via
          substitutive RTP stream, the substitutive RTP Stream must pass
          through the splicer before the substitutive content is delivered to
          receiver.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Substitutive RTP Sender"><vspace blankLines="1" />The
          sender of RTP packets carrying the substitutive RTP stream.<vspace
          blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Splicing In Point"><vspace blankLines="1" />A virtual
          point in the RTP stream, suitable for substitutive content entry,
          typically in the boundary between two independently decodable
          frames. <vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Splicing Out Point"><vspace blankLines="1" />A virtual
          point in the RTP stream, suitable for substitutive content exist,
          typically in the boundary between two independently decodable
          frames. <vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="Splicer"><vspace blankLines="1" />An intermediary node
          that inserts substitutive content into main RTP stream. The splicer
          sends substitutive content to RTP receiver instead of main content
          during splicing. It is also responsible for processing RTCP traffic
          between the RTP sender and the RTP receiver.</t>
        </list></t>
    </section>

    <section title="Requirements for RTP Splicing">
      <t>In order to allow seamless content splicing at the RTP layer, the
      following requirements must be met. Meeting these will also allow, but
      not require, seamless content splicing at layers above RTP.</t>

      <t><list style="hanging">
          <t hangText="REQ-1:"><vspace blankLines="1" />The splicer should be
          agnostic about the network and transport layer protocols used to
          deliver the RTP streams.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="REQ-2:"><vspace blankLines="1" />The splicing operation
          at the RTP layer must allow splicing at any point required by the
          media content, and must not constrain when splicing in or splicing
          out operations can take place.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="REQ-3:"><vspace blankLines="1" />Splicing of RTP
          content must be backward compatible with the RTP/RTCP protocol,
          associated profiles, payload formats, and extensions.<vspace
          blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="REQ-4:"><vspace blankLines="1" />The splicer will
          modify the content of RTP packets, and thus break the end-to-end
          security, at a minimum breaking the data integrity and source
          authentication. If the Splicer is designated to insert substitutive
          content, it must be trusted, i.e., be in the security context(s)
          with the main RTP sender, the substitutive RTP sender, and the
          receivers. If encryption is employed, the splicer commonly must
          decrypt the inbound RTP packets and re-encrypt the outbound RTP
          packets after splicing.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="REQ-5:"><vspace blankLines="1" />The splicer should
          rewrite as necessary and forward RTCP messages (e.g., including
          packet loss, jitter, etc.) sent from downstream receiver to the main
          RTP sender or the substitutive RTP sender, and thus allow the main
          RTP sender or substitutive RTP sender to learn the performance of
          the downstream receiver when its content is being passed to RTP
          receiver. In addition, the splicer should rewrite RTCP messages from
          the main RTP sender or substitutive RTP sender to the receiver.
          <vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="REQ-6:"><vspace blankLines="1" />The splicer must not
          affect other RTP sessions running between the RTP sender and the RTP
          receiver, and must be transparent for the RTP sessions it does not
          splice.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

          <t hangText="REQ-7:"><vspace blankLines="1" />The RTP receiver
          should not be able to detect any splicing points in the RTP stream
          produced by the splicer on RTP protocol level. For the advertisement
          insertion use case, it is important to make it difficult for the RTP
          receiver to detect where an advertisement insertion is starting or
          ending from the RTP packets, and thus avoiding the RTP receiver from
          filtering out the advertisement content. This memo only focuses on
          making the splicing undetectable at the RTP layer. The corresponding
          processing is depicted in section 4.5.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>
        </list></t>
    </section>

    <section title="Content Splicing for RTP sessions">
      <t>The RTP specification <xref target="RFC3550"></xref> defines two
      types of middlebox: RTP translators and RTP mixers. Splicing is best
      viewed as a mixing operation. The splicer generates a new RTP stream
      that is a mix of the main RTP stream and the substitutive RTP stream. An
      RTP mixer is therefore an appropriate model for a content splicer. In
      next four subsections (from subsection 4.1 to subsection 4.4), the
      document analyzes how the mixer handles RTP splicing and how it
      satisfies the general requirements listed in section 3. In subsection
      4.5, the document looks at REQ-7 in order to hide the fact that splicing
      take place.</t>

      <section title="RTP Processing in RTP Mixer">
        <t>A splicer could be implemented as a mixer that receives the main
        RTP stream and the substitutive content (possibly via a substitutive
        RTP stream), and sends a single output RTP stream to the receiver(s).
        That output RTP stream will contain either the main content or the
        substitutive content. The output RTP stream will come from the mixer,
        and will have the synchronization source (SSRC) of the mixer rather
        than the main RTP sender or the substitutive RTP sender.</t>

        <t>The mixer uses its own SSRC, sequence number space and timing model
        when generating the output stream. Moreover, the mixer may insert the
        SSRC of main RTP stream into contributing source (CSRC) list in the
        output media stream.</t>

        <t>At the splicing in point, when the substitutive content becomes
        active, the mixer chooses the substitutive RTP stream as input stream
        at splicing in point, and extracts the payload data (i.e.,
        substitutive content). If the substitutive content comes from local
        media file storage, the mixer directly fetches the substitutive
        content. After that, the mixer encapsulates substitutive content
        instead of main content as the payload of the output media stream, and
        then sends the output RTP media stream to receiver. The mixer may
        insert the SSRC of substitutive RTP stream into CSRC list in the
        output media stream. If the substitutive content comes from local
        media file storage, the mixer should leave the CSRC list blank.</t>

        <t>At the splicing out point, when the substitutive content ends, the
        mixer retrieves the main RTP stream as input stream at splicing out
        point, and extracts the payload data (i.e., main content). After that,
        the mixer encapsulates main content instead of substitutive content as
        the payload of the output media stream, and then sends the output
        media stream to the receivers. Moreover, the mixer may insert the SSRC
        of main RTP stream into CSRC list in the output media stream as
        before.</t>

        <t>Note that if the content is too large to fit into RTP packets sent
        to RTP receiver, the mixer needs to transcode or perform
        application-layer fragmentation. Usually the mixer is deployed as part
        of a managed system and MTU will be carefully managed by this system.
        This document does not raise any new MTU related issues compared to a
        standard mixer described in <xref target="RFC3550"></xref>.</t>

        <t>Splicing may occur more than once during the lifetime of main RTP
        stream, this means the mixer needs to send main content and
        substitutive content in turn with its own SSRC identifier. From
        receiver point of view, the only source of the output stream is the
        mixer regardless of where the content is coming from.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="RTCP Processing in RTP Mixer">
        <t>By monitoring available bandwidth and buffer levels and by
        computing network metrics such as packet loss, network jitter, and
        delay, RTP receiver can learn the network performance and communicate
        this to the RTP sender via RTCP reception reports.</t>

        <t>According to the description in section 7.3 of <xref
        target="RFC3550"></xref>, the mixer splits the RTCP flow between
        sender and receiver into two separate RTCP loops, RTP sender has no
        idea about the situation on the receiver. But splicing is a processing
        that the mixer selects one media stream from multiple streams rather
        than mixing them, so the mixer can leave the SSRC identifier in the
        RTCP report intact (i.e., the SSRC of downstream receiver), this
        enables the main RTP sender or the substitutive RTP sender to learn
        the situation on the receiver.</t>

        <t>If the RTCP report corresponds to a time interval that is entirely
        main content or entirely substitutive content, the number of output
        RTP packets containing substitutive content is equal to the number of
        input substitutive RTP packets (from substitutive RTP stream) during
        splicing, in the same manner, the number of output RTP packets
        containing main content is equal to the number of input main RTP
        packets (from main RTP stream) during non-splicing unless the mixer
        fragment the input RTP packets. This means that the mixer does not
        need to modify the loss packet fields in reception report blocks in
        RTCP reports. But if the mixer fragments the input RTP packets, it may
        need to modify the loss packet fields to compensate for the
        fragmentation. Whether the input RTP packets are fragmented or not,
        the mixer still needs to change the SSRC field in report block to the
        SSRC identifier of the main RTP sender or the substitutive RTP sender,
        and rewrite the extended highest sequence number field to the
        corresponding original extended highest sequence number before
        forwarding the RTCP report to the main RTP sender or the substitutive
        RTP sender.</t>

        <t>If the RTCP report spans the splicing in point or the splicing out
        point, it reflects the characteristics of the combination of main RTP
        packets and substitutive RTP packets. In this case, the mixer needs to
        divide the RTCP report into two separate RTCP reports and send them to
        their original RTP senders respectively. For each RTCP report, the
        mixer also needs to make the corresponding changes to the packet loss
        fields in report block besides the SSRC field and the extended highest
        sequence number field.</t>

        <t>If the mixer receives an RTCP extended report (XR) block, it should
        rewrite the XR report block in a similar way to the reception report
        block in the RTCP report.</t>

        <t>Besides forwarding the RTCP reports sent from RTP receiver, the
        mixer can also generate its own RTCP reports to inform the main RTP
        sender or the substitutive RTP sender of the reception quality of the
        content reaches the mixer when the content is not sent to the RTP
        receiver. These RTCP reports use the SSRC of the mixer. If the
        substitutive content comes from local media file storage, the mixer
        does not need to generate RTCP reports for the substitutive
        stream.</t>

        <t>Based on above RTCP operating mechanism, the RTP sender whose
        content is being passed to receiver will see the reception quality of
        its stream as received by the mixer, and the reception quality of
        spliced stream as received by the receiver. The RTP sender whose
        content is not being passed to receiver will only see the reception
        quality of its stream as received by the mixer.</t>

        <t>The mixer must forward RTCP SDES and BYE packets from the receiver
        to the sender, and may forward them in inverse direction as defined in
        section 7.3 of <xref target="RFC3550"></xref>.</t>

        <t>Once the mixer receives an RTP/AVPF <xref target="RFC4585"></xref>
        transport layer feedback packet, it must handle it carefully as the
        feedback packet may contain the information of the content that come
        from different RTP senders. In this case the mixer needs to divide the
        feedback packet into two separate feedback packets and process the
        information in the feedback control information (FCI) in the two
        feedback packets, just as the RTCP report process described above.</t>

        <t>If the substitutive content comes from local media file storage
        (i.e., the mixer can be regarded as the substitutive RTP sender), any
        RTCP packets received from downstream relate to the substitutive
        content must be terminated on the mixer without any further
        processing.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Considerations for Handling Media Clipping at the RTP Layer">
        <t>This section provides informative guidelines on how to handle media
        substitution at both the RTP layer to minimize media impact. Dealing
        with the media substitution well at the RTP layer is necessary for
        quality implementations. To perfectly erase any media impact needs
        more considerations at the higher layers, how the media substitution
        is erased at the higher layers are outside of the scope of this
        memo.</t>

        <t>If the time duration for any substitutive content mismatches, i.e.,
        shorter or longer, than the duration of the main content to be
        replaced, then media degradations may occur at the splicing point and
        thus impact the user's experience.</t>

        <t>If the substitutive content has shorter duration from the main
        content, then there could be a gap in the output RTP stream. The RTP
        sequence number will be contiguous across this gap, but there will be
        an unexpected jump in the RTP timestamp. Such a gap would cause the
        receiver to have nothing to play. This may be unavoidable, unless the
        mixer can adjusts the splice in or splice out point to compensate.
        This assumes the splicing mixer can send more of the main RTP stream
        in place of the shorter substitutive stream, or vary the length of the
        substitutive content. It is the responsibility of the higher layer
        protocols and the media providers to ensure that the substitutive
        content is of very similar duration as the main content to be
        replaced.</t>

        <t>If the substitute content has longer duration than the reserved gap
        duration, there will be an overlap between the substitutive RTP stream
        and the main RTP stream at the splicing out point. A straightforward
        approach is that the mixer performs an ungraceful action, terminating
        the splicing and switching back to main RTP stream even if this may
        cause media stuttering on receiver. Alternatively, the mixer may
        transcode the substitutive content to play at a faster rate than
        normal, to adjust it to the length of the gap in the main content, and
        generate a new RTP stream for the transcoded content. This is a
        complex operation, and very specific to the content and media codec
        used. Additional approaches exists, these types of issues should be
        taken into account in both mixer implementors and media generators to
        enable smooth substitutions.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Congestion Control Considerations">
        <t>If the substitutive content has somewhat different characteristics
        from the main content it replaces, or if the substitutive content is
        encoded with a different codec or has different encoding bitrate, it
        might overload the network and might cause network congestion on the
        path between the mixer and the RTP receiver(s) that would not have
        been caused by the main content.</t>

        <t>To be robust to network congestion and packet loss, a mixer that is
        performing splicing must continuously monitor the status of downstream
        network by monitoring any of the following RTCP reports that are
        used:</t>

        <t><list style="numbers">
            <t>RTCP receiver reports indicate packet loss <xref
            target="RFC3550"></xref>.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

            <t>RTCP NACKs for lost packet recovery <xref
            target="RFC4585"></xref>.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

            <t>RTCP ECN Feedback information <xref
            target="RFC6679"></xref>.</t>
          </list></t>

        <t>Once the mixer detects congestion on its downstream link, it will
        treat these reports as follows:</t>

        <t><list style="numbers">
            <t>If the mixer receives the RTCP receiver reports with packet
            loss indication, it will forward the reports to the substitutive
            RTP sender or the main RTP sender as described in section
            4.2.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

            <t>If mixer receives the RTCP NACK packets defined in <xref
            target="RFC4585"></xref> from RTP receiver for packet loss
            recovery, it first identifies the content category of lost packets
            to which the NACK corresponds. Then, the mixer will generate new
            RTCP NACK for the lost packets with its own SSRC, and make
            corresponding changes to their sequence numbers to match original,
            pre-spliced, packets. If the lost substitutive content comes from
            local media file storage, the mixer acting as substitutive RTP
            sender will directly fetch the lost substitutive content and
            retransmit it to RTP receiver. The mixer may buffer the sent RTP
            packets and do the retransmission.<vspace blankLines="1" />It is
            somewhat complex that the lost packets requested in a single RTCP
            NACK message not only contain the main content but also the
            substitutive content. To address this, the mixer must divide the
            RTCP NACK packet into two separate RTCP NACK packets: one requests
            for the lost main content, and another requests for the lost
            substitutive content.<vspace blankLines="1" /></t>

            <t>If an ECN-aware mixer receives RTCP ECN feedbacks (RTCP ECN
            feedback packets or RTCP XR summary reports) defined in <xref
            target="RFC6679"></xref> from the RTP receiver, it must process
            them in a similar way to the RTP/AVPF feedback packet or RTCP XR
            process described in section 4.2 of this memo.</t>
          </list></t>

        <t>These three methods require the mixer to run a congestion control
        loop and bitrate adaptation between itself and RTP receiver. The mixer
        can thin or transcode the main RTP stream or the substitutive RTP
        stream, but such operations are very inefficient and difficult, and
        bring undesirable delay. Fortunately in this memo, the mixer acting as
        splicer can rewrite the RTCP packets sent from the RTP receiver and
        forward them to the RTP sender, thus letting the RTP sender knows that
        congestion is being experienced on the path between the mixer and the
        RTP receiver. Then, the RTP sender applies its congestion control
        algorithm and reduces the media bitrate to a value that is in
        compliance with congestion control principles for the slowest link.
        The congestion control algorithm may be a TCP-friendly bitrate
        adaptation algorithm specified in <xref target="RFC5348"></xref>, or a
        DCCP congestion control algorithms defined in <xref
        target="RFC5762"></xref>.</t>

        <t>If the substitutive content comes from local media file storage,
        the mixer must directly reduce the bitrate as if it were the
        substitutive RTP sender.</t>

        <t>From above analysis, to reduce the risk of congestion and remain
        the bandwidth consumption stable over time, the substitutive RTP
        stream is recommended to be encoded at an appropriate bitrate to match
        that of main RTP stream. If the substitutive RTP stream comes from the
        substitutive RTP sender, this sender had better has some knowledge
        about the media encoding bitrate of main content in advance. How it
        knows that is out of scope in this draft.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Considerations for Implementing Undetectable Splicing">
        <t>If it is desirable to prevent receivers from detecting that
        splicing is occurring at the RTP layer, the mixer must not include a
        CSRC list in outgoing RTP packets, and must not forward RTCP messages
        from the main RTP sender or from the substitutive RTP sender. Due to
        the absence of CSRC list in the output RTP stream, the RTP receiver
        only initiates SDES, BYE and APP packets to the mixer without any
        knowledge of the main RTP sender and the substitutive RTP sender.</t>

        <t>CSRC list identifies the contributing sources, these SSRC
        identifiers of contributing sources are kept globally unique for each
        RTP session. The uniqueness of SSRC identifier is used to resolve
        collisions and detecting RTP-level forwarding loops as defined in
        section 8.2 of <xref target="RFC3550"></xref>. The absence of CSRC
        list in this case will create a danger that loops involving those
        contributing sources could not be detected. The loops could occur if
        either the mixer is misconfigured to form a loop, or a second
        mixer/translator is added, causing packets to loop back to upstream of
        the original mixer. An undetected RTP packet loop is a serious denial
        of service threat, which can consume all available bandwidth or mixer
        processing resources until the looped packets are dropped as result of
        congestion. So Non-RTP means must be used to detect and resolve loops
        if the mixer does not add a CSRC list.</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="Implementation Considerations">
      <t>When the mixer is used to handle RTP splicing, RTP receiver does not
      need any RTP/RTCP extension for splicing. As a trade-off, additional
      overhead could be induced on the mixer which uses its own sequence
      number space and timing model. So the mixer will rewrite RTP sequence
      number and timestamp whatever splicing is active or not, and generate
      RTCP flows for both sides. In case the mixer serves multiple main RTP
      streams simultaneously, this may lead to more overhead on the mixer.</t>

      <t>If undetectable splicing requirement is required, CSRC list is not
      included in outgoing RTP packet, this brings a potential issue with loop
      detection as briefly described in section 4.5.</t>
    </section>

    <section anchor="Security" title="Security Considerations">
      <t>The splicing application is subject to the general security
      considerations of the RTP specification <xref
      target="RFC3550"></xref>.</t>

      <t>The mixer acting as splicer replaces some content with other content
      in RTP packets, thus breaking any RTP level end-to-end security, such as
      integrity protection and source authentication. Thus any RTP level or
      outside security mechanism, such as IPSec or DTLS will use a security
      association between the splicer and the receiver. When using SRTP the
      splicer could be provisioned with the same security association as the
      main RTP sender. Using a limitation in the SRTP security services
      regarding source authentication, the splicer can modify and re-protect
      the RTP packets without enabling the receiver to detect if the data
      comes from the original source or from the splicer.</t>

      <t>Security goals to have source authentication all the way from the RTP
      main sender to the receiver through the splicer is not possible with
      splicing and any existing solutions. A new solution can theoretically be
      developed that enables identifying the participating entities and what
      each provides, i.e. the different media sources, main and substituting,
      and the splicer providing the RTP level integration of the media
      payloads in a common timeline and synchronization context. Such a
      solution would obviously not meet Req-7 and will be detectable on RTP
      level.</t>

      <t>The nature of this RTP service offered by a network operator
      employing a content splicer is that the RTP layer security relationship
      is between the receiver and the splicer, and between the senders and the
      splicer, are not end-to-end. This appears to invalidate the
      undetectability goal, but in the common case the receiver will consider
      the splicer as the main media source.</t>

      <t>Some RTP deployments use RTP payload security mechanisms (e.g.,
      ISMACryp <xref target="ISMACryp"></xref>). If any payload internal
      security mechanisms are used, only the RTP sender and the RTP receiver
      establish that security context, in which case, any middlebox (e.g.,
      splicer) between the RTP sender and the RTP receiver will not get such
      keying material. This may impact the splicer's possibility to perform
      splicing if it is dependent on RTP payload level hints for finding the
      splice in and out points. However, other potential solutions exist to
      specify or mark where the splicing points exist in the media streams.
      When using RTP payload security mechanisms SRTP or other security
      mechanism at RTP or lower layers can be used to provide integrity and
      source authentication between the splicer and the RTP receiver.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="IANA Considerations">
      <t>No IANA actions are required.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Acknowledgments">
      <t>The following individuals have reviewed the earlier versions of this
      specification and provided very valuable comments: Colin Perkins, Magnus
      Westerlund, Roni Even, Tom Van Caenegem, Joerg Ott, David R Oran, Cullen
      Jennings, Ali C Begen, Charles Eckel and Ning Zong.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="10. Appendix- Why Mixer Is Chosen">
      <t>Translator and mixer both can realize splicing by changing a set of
      RTP parameters.</t>

      <t>Translator has no SSRC, hence it is transparent to RTP sender and
      receiver. Therefore, RTP sender sees the full path to the receiver when
      translator is passing its content. When translator insert the
      substitutive content RTP sender could get a report on the path up to
      translator itself. Additionally, if splicing does not occur yet,
      translator does not need to rewrite RTP header, the overhead on
      translator can be avoided.</t>

      <t>If mixer is used to do splicing, it can also allow RTP sender to
      learn the situation of its content on receiver or on mixer just like
      translator does, which is specified in section 4.2. Compared to
      translator, mixer's outstanding benefit is that it is pretty straight
      forward to do with RTCP messages, for example, bit-rate adaptation to
      handle varying network conditions. But translator needs more
      considerations and its implementation is more complex.</t>

      <t>From above analysis, both translator and mixer have their own
      advantages: less overhead or less complexity on handling RTCP. Through
      long and sophisticated discussion, the avtext WG members prefer less
      complexity rather than less overhead and incline to mixer to do
      splicing.</t>

      <t>If one chooses mixer as splicer, the overhead on mixer must be taken
      into account even if the splicing does not occur yet.</t>
    </section>
  </middle>

  <back>
    <references title="Normative References">
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.3550"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4585"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.6679"?>
    </references>

    <references title="Informative References">
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.3711"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5348"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5762"?>

      <reference anchor="SCTE30">
        <front>
          <title>Digital Program Insertion Splicing API</title>

          <author>
            <organization>Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers
            (SCTE)</organization>
          </author>

          <date year="2009" />
        </front>

        <format target=" http://www.scte.org/standards/" type="word" />
      </reference>

      <reference anchor="SCTE35">
        <front>
          <title>Digital Program Insertion Cueing Message for Cable</title>

          <author>
            <organization>Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers
            (SCTE)</organization>
          </author>

          <date year="2011" />
        </front>

        <format target=" http://www.scte.org/standards/" type="word" />
      </reference>

      <reference anchor="ISMACryp">
        <front>
          <title>ISMA Encryption and Authentication Specification 2.0</title>

          <author>
            <organization>Internet Streaming Media Alliance
            (ISMA)</organization>
          </author>

          <date month="November" year="2007" />
        </front>
      </reference>
    </references>
  </back>
</rfc>

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