Following Cyril Concolato’s first attempt to store TTML in ISOBMF, I have added support for parsing and DASHing EBU-TTD as of version 5366 of GPAC. Therefore you don’t need NHML anymore when importing EBU-TTD TTML content. Please read Cyril’s blog post if you wish to know more about TTML or MPEG-4 part 30 (TTML and WebVTT in ISOBMF).

EBU released two specifications recently:

• TECH 3380 v1.0: EBU-TT-D SUBTITLING DISTRIBUTION FORMAT.
  This document aims to define a distribution subtitling format base on TTML. This is both a restriction (i.e. a profile) and an extension of TTML. The extensions are very limited. The restrictions allow to mitigate most of the TTML criticisms (especially an ability to express things in several ways, which led to a difficult generic parsing process).
• TECH 3381 v0.9: CARRIAGE OF EBU-TT-D IN ISOBMFF.
  This document explains how to store some EBU-TTD content in ISOBMF. Basically it follows the MPEG-4 part 30 standard.

Useful command-lines for import:

MP4Box -add sample.ttml sample.mp4

EBU-TTD is recognized automatically:

MP4Box -add ebu-ttd_sample.xml:ext=ttml -new tmp.mp4
TTML Import Note: TTML import - EBU-TTD detected

To extract the TTML samples from the MP4 (generates one TTML per MP4 sample) (note: replace track 1 from this example with your track id) :

MP4Box -raws 1 sample.mp4

Just a few remarks about this implementation:

• It is made on top of TTML existing support. So it has the same limitations (no images support, etc.).
• DASH segmentation is fully supported.
• Regression tests are still unsufficient. We are looking for additional feedback and test files.
• There are still a few open questions which are on their way to standardization. You can expect a few minor improvements in the future.

EBU-TTD current limitations

/!\ These limitations don’t exist if you use NHML /!\

• Overlapping times are not supported.
• Multiple <region> elements may trigger errors.

/!\ Fixed limitations /\

• The expected default namespace of the EBU-TT-D document is ‘http://www.w3.org/ns/ttml’. Documents where this namespace is bound to prefix are supported starting at 08/30/2015 (but no other namespace checks are performed).

This development has been made possible thanks to EBU through GPAC Licensing.