I am adding a function to play Android YouTube API to play videos in my app. The problem is that the video quality is automatically always set to highest quality available. But it causes lagginess when the internet is not good. Is there a way for me to set the quality to "auto" or specify a lower quality playback?
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We are trying to create a video quality selector in a mobile app which works the same as youtube. The quality is selected and the video plays in that quality and does not automatically switch. From the backend we have m3u8 format video files which contain all the different resolutions that the video can play in and their URLs. On web and android, we have found that we can access the contents of this m3u8 files to display the available resolutions and select the corresponding one for the resolution selected. e.g select 720p in menu and then play 720p video track.
On iOS however, we are using react native video, which is a wrapper around AVPlayer on the native side which from my research does not seem to provide the access to select the different tracks from the m3u8 file as is possible on android. selectedVideoTrack is exposed on react-native-video for ios but does not work, likely due to above statement.
Adjusting the maximum bit rate is provided on react native video api, but in order to select the quality we need to set the exact bit rate, or at least the minimum bit rate, but none of these are exposed in AVPlayer and thus not in react native player either.
One solution I have tried was to create different m3u8 file for each resolution the video supports, only providing that option in the m3u8 file so it cannot auto degrade or auto improve resolution as is the nature of HLS when a specific quality is selected. Then, once a different quality option was selected, I change the underlying url source of the video and seek to the previous position to maintain the position of the video, instead of it replaying from the beginning. This solution works, however it requires a large change to our current backend infrastructure and seems to cause some waiting time while the new url is loaded. So I would like to know if there are any other better solutions before we are forced to go forward with this one.
So my question is how are Youtube and other iOS apps with a quality selector doing things? Are they following my method or am I missing something which allows them to work with different resolution videos? Answers can be in native code as well as javascript react native solutions.
I am working on video player app which streams video from m3u8 url.
Due to apple limitation, I can't set specific video quality during playtime or startup. I am curious because i can see this feature supported in Youtube iOS app.
Apple provides preferredPeakBitRate but it doesn't guarantee whether video will be played in that bitrate.
How do youtube able to achieve that video quality or maintaining specific video quality in iOS?
Just let me know if i am doing anything wrong or missing anything. Thanks in advance
I am building an app that streams video content, something like TikTok. So you can swipe videos in table, and when new cell becomes visible the video starts playing. And it works great, except when you compare it to TikTok or Instagram or ect. My video starts streaming pretty fast but not always, it is very sensible to network quality, and sometimes even when network is great it still buffering too long. When comparing to TikTok, Instagram ... in same conditions they don't seam to have that problem. I am using JWPlayer as video hosting service, and AVPlayer as player. I am also doing async preload of assets before assigning them to PlayerItem. So my question is what else can I do to speed up video start. Do I need to do some special video preparations before uploading it to streaming service. (also I stream m3U8 files). Is there some set of presets that enables optimum streaming quality and start speed. Thanks in advance.
So theres a few things you can do.
HLS is apples preferred method of streaming to an apple device. So try to get that as much as possible for iOS devices.
The best practices when it comes to mobile streaming is offering multiple resolutions. The trick is to start with the lowest resolution available to get the video started. Then switch to a higher resolution once the speed is determined to be capable of higher resolutions. Generally this can be done quickly that the user doesn't really notice. YouTube is the best example of this tactic. HLS automatically does this, not sure about m3U8.
Assuming you are offering a UICollectionView or UITableView, try to start low resolution streams of every video on the screen in the background every time the scrolling stops. Not only does this allow you to do some cool preview stuff based off the buffer but when they click on it the video is already established. If thats too slow try just the middle video.
Edit the video in the background before upload to only be at the max resolution you expected it to be played at. There is no 4k resolution screen resolutions on any iOS device and probably never will be so cut down the amount of data.
Without getting more specifics this is all I got for now. Hope I understood your question correctly. Good luck!
I hope that the YouTube API team will address the following issue.
YouTube has disabled the ability to request a specific size using the setPlaybackQuality() method.
If I am correct, the YouTube iframe API automatically determines the appropriate resolution / size to serve up (small, medium, large, hd720 etc) depending upon the pixel dimensions of the embedded player.
This is a huge problem over cellular networks.
AT&T, Verizon, TMobile and others have all begun to throttle video streams and / or disable playback all together in some cases for streams above 480p.
In our case, we are seeing 1.5 - 2 minutes of buffering before playback in the embedded YouTube player at widths above 360px.
In portrait mode this limit would at least be somewhat acceptable, but in full-screen landscape on mobile, the preferred method for watching video, YouTube changes the quality automatically and in most cases serves up HD720p which almost immediately becomes stuck in buffering mode over cellular connections.
We need the ability to request a specific resolution, and/or we need YouTube to serve up video at 480p over cellular connections.
The suggestedQuality parameter of player.setPlaybackQuality(suggestedQuality:String):Void determines appropriate playback quality not only depending upon the pixel dimensions of the embedded player, but actually varies for different users, videos, systems and other playback conditions.
Setting the parameter value to default instructs YouTube to select the most appropriate playback quality.
YouTube selects the appropriate playback quality. This setting effectively reverts the quality level to the default state and nullifies any previous efforts to set playback quality using the cueVideoById, loadVideoById or setPlaybackQuality functions.
I assume this also takes mobile connections into consideration, but if you believe there is an issue on this API feature, you can contact YouTube here.
im working on Smart TV app for Samsung which should use youtube api to play videos. Embedded videos will work only when app resolution and yt player size are 960x540 or below,
if I set higher resolution (1280x720 or 1920x1080) player stucks, behaves really slow, and videos will buffer infinitely.
Has anyone succeeded in embedding yt videos with higher resolution player?
Thx in advance.
Video player work in FullHD resolution in fullscreen regardless of widget resolution.
If you have troubles with buffering, check your connection speed. Try play file from local network to check that selected resolution and codecs hadled well by TV.
recently i found this case. The youtube apps working great on 720p resolution if the video length is below 10min, but longer than that for example 30min the player will stuck just like as you said.
When changing the app resolution to 540p the youtube player working great again for all videos. I suppose the youtube is using progressive download on their player and Smart TV storage itself is not enough to prepare the long video storage space with 720p resolution rendering.
The conclusion is when using flash player/youtube in apps the best at using 540p app resolution.
Thx all for answering,
in the end I used different approach which showed like best solution.
I used 720p resolution, and youtube cue video functionality.
Basically i cued video, and on "videoCued" event i called "playVideo" method.
This allowed player to get ready and initialize before playing video.