Streaming using adaptive bitrateAdaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming came on the market in a big way during the last 10 years. Its main innovations compared to traditional IP delivery were:
Using HTTP communication rather than UDP multicast - lowering the impact of individual packet loss events and supporting delivery over the Internet
Having multiple bitrates of the video available, called profiles or renditions
As network conditions change, this enables a device or app to seamlessly switch between different versions of the stream with higher or lower resolution or more or less compression. This is what makes adaptive bitrate streaming adaptive. Every version of the stream is split into pieces of up to a few seconds in duration, which are called segments, fragments, or chunks.
The most impactful formats are HLS from Apple and MPEG-DASH, defined by the MPEG standards group.
Why was CMAF created?Adaptive Bitrate Streaming as originally designed had several challenges.
The first one is latency. With a traditional HLS setup, the latency from the live signal can be as much as 30 to 60 seconds. This is problematic with content such as sports, where the viewer gets the action later than the neighbors.
A second challenge was fragmentation in the media formats used. HLS typically used Transport Stream segments, while DASH and Smooth Streaming opted for MP4. Supporting multiple formats meant that packaging must be duplicated with both TS and MP4. This leads to extra expenses in both packaging and CDN delivery. A way to handle this is just-in-time packaging where a single mezzanine format (say MP4) is encoded and then transmuxed to another container format such as TS on the fly. This lowers the encoding costs but not the CDN delivery costs.
In 2016, Apple added MP4 support to HLS in protocol version 7, and the same year, Microsoft and Apple jointly proposed a new standard based on MP4, called the Common Media Application Format. CMAF was officially published through MPEG in 2018 with support from HLS, Smooth Streaming and MPEG-DASH, thus allowing fragments to be reused across all technologies.
In parallel with this container format harmonization, there has also been a move towards standardizing the encryption of assets. CMAF is frequently used with Common Encryption, another harmonizing MPEG standard. This standard specifies how to encrypt the mdat payload and how to signal the encryption while allowing each DRM vendor to use its own method for retrieving the actual decryption keys. This way, the same fragments can be decrypted on multiple platforms with different DRM vendors.
How is it structured, and how does it enable lower latency?CMAF is based on the ISO Base Media File Format, which is a subset of the MP4 container format. The format uses the same concept of boxes as MP4, and many of the boxes used with traditional fragmented MP4 are still present in CMAF. A notable difference is that there is a hierarchy of smaller subdivisions:
The ability to divide a movie or live stream into smaller pieces is key in streaming applications. Rather than waiting for a full MP4 file to download, we want to download no more than a few seconds of content at a time, so that we can play and download at the same time.
But how does CMAF lower the latency from that baseline approach?
The key difference is what is called Chunked encoding . This means that a segment is internally subdivided into smaller units, called fragments and chunks. This allows a player to start decoding video without having to download the full segment (which could be between a few seconds to 10 seconds). For that to happen, the partial segment must be made available to the player via the CDN and origin. That part of the infrastructure must support the continuous transfer of the segments and fragments as the individual chunks are added to it.
SummaryCMAF enables both lower latency and more efficient use of resources, making it an important step towards a broadcast-like experience delivered over the top.
Additional technologies are also being developed to further improve latency numbers, for instance HESP, and the Low Latency HLS technology from Apple.
Most recent headlines
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Barack Obama Includes Laufey on His 2025 Favorite Music List The former presidents roundup of books, music, and movies includes a song from the Berklee alums ...
20/12/2025
Study reveals a key hormonal circuit in the kidneys Scripps Research scientists identify the protein that helps kidney cells regulate renin, providing foundatio...
19/12/2025
With Playout Release 2025.4, ToolsOnAir continues to push professional playout w...
19/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Diversified's Jared Timmins on AI for Broadcast Sports and Cre...
19/12/2025
2025 SVG Summit Audio Recap: Say What?The Audio Production and Distribution Workshop at the SVG Summit 20 took on issues including speech intelligibility, Next-...
19/12/2025
Gamified fun: Channel 5 on its NFL Big Game Night ambitions with Hungry Bear Med...
19/12/2025
College Football Playoff Preview: For ESPN, Round 1 is a Fantastic Yet Familia...
19/12/2025
AWS's Jason Dvorkin on Developing Partnerships With the NBA and PGA Tour, Em...
19/12/2025
Netflix Kicks Off Packed Sports Week with Paul-Joshua Fight Before Shifting to N...
19/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Nareev Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
19/12/2025
Mounted to the pylon of an AH-1Z Viper helicopter, a Red Wolf vehicle successful...
Streaming using adaptive bitrateAdaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming came on the market in a big way during the last 10 years. Its main innovations compared to traditional IP delivery were:
