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Chapter 2 Preparing and Loading Content 2-3
■ All trick files must be encoded at a bit rate that is less than or equal to the bit rate
of the normal-speed bit stream.
The Media Stream Manager supports the playing of trick play streams. See the
chapter on the Media Stream Manager Client API in the Sun MediaCenter Server
Programmer’s Guide for a discussion of how to play titles that have trick play streams.
2.3 Splice Points
To facilitate switching among multiple bit streams within a content package, all bit
streams must define convenient splice points. A splice point is a position in the bit
stream at which the server switches into or out of when a user switches from one
speed or direction to another. For optimum switching among streams, you should
specify splice point locations in an index file, the format for which is described in
Section B.5 “Index File Requirements” on page B-10.
Note – The Media Stream Manager switches among trick play streams and a normal
play stream even in the absence of an index file. However, if an index file is not
present, the Media Stream Manager performs positioning between streams by the
linear interpolation of bit rate over file size, which means that streams are entered
and exited at arbitrary points. This sort of stream switching causes problems for
some decoders. You should use trick play without an index file only if your decoder
is capable of resynchronizing and if artifacts are acceptable.
The frequency of the splice points within the bit streams in a content package should
reflect the latency you want for trick play functionality. More splice points mean
lower latency.
A splice point must have the characteristics described in the following subsections.
2.3.1 Packet Boundary
A splice point must occur on the boundary of the underlying packet. For example,
for the MPEGTS format, the splice point should occur on the MPEG-2 transport
packet boundary.