[speex-dev] RTP Profile Revision
Greg Herlein
gherlein at herlein.com
Tue Nov 5 08:56:17 PST 2002
The latest revision of the draft RTP Profile is attached for
review. This will be submitted to the IETF Audio-Video Transport
Working Group for consideration immediately, so if you have any
more comments, let us know.
In addition, we will be applying for an official MIME type.
Note that the AVP code and the MIME type in this latest revision
have been changed from "SPX" to "speex" based on comments from
the community. This change was approved by Simon Morlat
(linphone maintainer, still the heaviest deployment of Speex) and
of course Jean-Marc Valin. The three of us are moving this
forward towards RFC status.
You can always find the latest profile (and archived ones
too) at:
http://www.herlein.com/downloads/speex/docs/
I assume the SPeex site will get them too, in time.
Greg Herlein
<p><p><p><p>
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Network Working Group Audio-Video Transport Working Group
Internet Draft Herlein/Valin
draft-herlein-speex-rtp-profile-04 November 5, 2002
Expires: May 5, 2003
RTP Payload Format for the Speex Codec
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
Speex is an open-source, patent-free voice codec suitable for use in
Voice over IP (VoIP) type applications. The Speex codec supports two
modes of operation: narrowband at a nominal 8kHz sample rate and
wideband at a nominal 16kHz sample rate. Speex supports Voice
Activity Detection (VAD) and Variable Bit Rate (VBR). This document
describes the payload format for Speex generated bit streams within an
RTP packet. Also included here are the necessary details for the use
of Speex with MIME and SDP.
1. Conventions used in this document
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119 [6].
2. Overview of the Speex Codec
Speex is based on the CELP encoding technique with support for either
wideband (nominal 16kHz) or narrowband (nominal 8kHz) sampling. The
main characteristics can be summerized as follows:
o Free software/open-source, royalty-free
o Integration of wideband and narrowband in the same bit-stream
o Wide range of bit-rates available
o Dynamic bit-rate switching and variable bit-rate (VBR)
o Voice Activity Detection (VAD, integrated with VBR)
o Variable complexity
3. RTP payload format for Speex
Speex uses 20 ms frames and a variable sampling rate clock. The
RTP timestamp MUST be in units of 1/X of a second where X is the
sample rate used. Speex uses a nominal 8kHz sampling rate for
narrowband use and a nominal 16kHz sampling rate for wideband use.
The RTP payload for Speex has the format shown in Figure 1. No
additional header specific to this payload format is required.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| RTP Header [3] |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
| |
+ one or more frames of Speex |
| .... |p|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1: RTP payload for Speex
The encoding and decoding algorithm can change the bit rate at any
20ms frame boundary but the bit rate change notification is provided
in-band with the bit stream. Each frame contains both
"mode" (narrowband or wideband) and "sub-mode" (bit-rate)
information in the bit stream. No out-of-band notification is
required for the decoder to process changes in the bit rate sent by
the encoder.
For the purposes of packetizing the bit stream in RTP, it is only
necessary to consider the sequence of bits as output by the Speex
encoder, and present the same sequence to the decoder. The payload
format described here maintains this sequence.
An RTP packet MAY contain Speex frames of the same bit rate or of
varying bit rates, since the bit-rate for a frame is conveyed in
band with the signal.
It is RECOMMENDED that values of 8000 or 16000 be used for normal
internet telephony applications, though the sample rate is
supported at rates as low as 6000 Hz and as high as 22.05 kHz.
The RTP payload MUST be padded to provide an integer number of
octets as the payload length. These padding bits MUST be all zero.
This padding is only required for the last frame in the packet, and
only to ensure the packet contents ends on an octet boundary.
3.1 Multiple Speex frames in a RTP packet
By default only one Speex frame is permitted in a single RTP
packet. When operating with multiple frames per packet then the
end points MUST use out-of-band negotiation to determine the number
of frames per packet. See section 5 below for an example of how to
do this with SDP [5].
3.2 Computing the number of Speex frames
If using SDP [5] (see section 5 below for an example) this can be
done using the "ptime" variable to denote the packetization
interval (ie, how many milliseconds of audio is encoded in a single
RTP packet). Since Speex uses 20ms frames, ptime values of
multiples of 20 denote multiple Speex frames per packet. Values of
ptime in other than multiples of 20 SHOULD be ignored and SHOULD
use the default value of one instead.
4. MIME registration of Speex
MIME media type name: audio
MIME subtype: speex
Required parameters:
Optional parameters:
ptime: RECOMMENDED duration of each packet in milliseconds.
mode: RECOMMENDED speex encoding mode. Can be {1,2,3,4,5,any}
penh: RECOMMENDED use of perceptual enhancement. 1 indicates
to the decoder that perceptual enhancement is recommended,
0 indicates that it is not.
Encoding considerations:
This type is only defined for transfer via RTP as specified in
a Work in Progress.
Security Considerations:
See Section 6 of RFC 3047.
Interoperability considerations: none
Published specification:
Applications which use this media type:
Audio and video streaming and conferencing tools
Additional information: none
Person & email address to contact for further information:
Greg Herlein <gherlein at herlein.com>
Jean-Marc Valin <jean-marc.valin at hermes.usherb.ca>
Intended usage: COMMON
Author/Change controller:
Author: Greg Herlein <gherlein at herlein.com>
Change controller: Greg Herlein <gherlein at herlein.com>
5. SDP usage of Speex
When conveying information by SDP [5], the encoding name SHALL be
"speex" (the same as the MIME subtype). An example of the media
representation in SDP for offering a single channel of Speex at
8000 samples per second might be:
m=audio 8088 RTP/AVP 97
a=rtpmap:97 speex/8000
Note that the sampling frequency is given on the a=rtpmap line. Its
value is typically 8000 for narrow band operation and 16000 for
wide band operation.
If for some reason the offerer has bandwith limitations, he may use
the "b=" header, as explained in SDP [5]. The following example
illustrates the case where the offerer cannot receive more than
10 kbit/s.
m=audio 8088 RTP/AVP 97
b=AS:10
a=rtmap:97 speex/8000
In this case, if the remote part agrees, it should configure its
speex encoder so that it does not use modes that produce more than
10 kbit/s. Note that the "b=" constraint also applies on all
payload types that may be proposed in the media line ("m=").
An other way to make recommendations to the remote speex encoder
is to use its specific parameters:
m=audio 8008 RTP/AVP 97
a=rtpmap:97 speex/8000
a=fmtp:97 mode=3
This examples illustrate an offerer that wishes to receive
a speex stream at 8000Hz, but only using speex mode 3.
The offerer may suggest to the remote decoder to activate
its perceptual enhancement filter like this:
m=audio 8088 RTP/AVP 97
a=rtmap:97 speex/8000
a=fmtp:97 penh=1
Several speex specific parameters can be given in a single
a=fmtp line provided that they are separated by a semi-colon:
a=fmtp:97 mode=any;penh=1
Finally the use of a particular packetization interval may be
suggested to the remote encoder using the ptime parameter:
m=audio 8008 RTP/AVP 97
a=rtpmap:97 speex/8000
a=ptime:40
Note that the ptime parameter applies to all payloads listed
in the media line.
Speex can encode frames of 20 ms. Values of ptime not multiple
of 20 ms are meaningless, so the receiver of such ptime values
SHOULD ignore them.
6. Security Considerations
RTP packets using the payload format defined in this specification
are subject to the security considerations discussed in the RTP
specification [3], and any appropriate RTP profile. This implies
that confidentiality of the media streams is achieved by encryption.
Because the data compression used with this payload format is applied
end-to-end, encryption may be performed after compression so there is
no conflict between the two operations.
A potential denial-of-service threat exists for data encodings using
compression techniques that have non-uniform receiver-end
computational load. The attacker can inject pathological datagrams
into the stream which are complex to decode and cause the receiver to
be overloaded. However, this encoding does not exhibit any
significant non-uniformity.
As with any IP-based protocol, in some circumstances a receiver may
be overloaded simply by the receipt of too many packets, either
desired or undesired. Network-layer authentication may be used to
discard packets from undesired sources, but the processing cost of
the authentication itself may be too high. In a multicast
environment, pruning of specific sources may be implemented in future
versions of IGMP [7] and in multicast routing protocols to allow a
receiver to select which sources are allowed to reach it.
7. References
1. Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP
9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
2. ITU-T Recommendation G.722.1, available online from the ITU
bookstore at http://www.itu.int.
3. Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R. and V. Jacobson, "RTP:
A Transport Protocol for real-time applications", RFC 1889,
January 1996. (Updated by a Work in Progress.)
4. Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies",
RFC 2045, November 1996.
5. Handley, M. and V. Jacobson, "SDP: Session Description Protocol",
RFC 2327, April 1998.
6. Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
7. Deering, S., "Host Extensions for IP Multicasting", STD 5, RFC
1112, August 1989.
8. Acknowledgments
9. Author's Address
Greg Herlein <gherlein at herlein.com>
San Francisco, CA
Jean-Marc Valin <jean-marc.valin at hermes.usherb.ca>
Québec, Canada
Simon Morlat <simon.morlat at linphone.org>
France
10. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Herlein Internet Draft [Page 6]
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