for a flash application I am building I need to stream a large flv file. My hosting can't stream this video in a good enough fashion. I decided to host my file on youtube and try and extract the flv file out of it. It is very difficult. This is not a duplicate, there are many questions about this issue. Youtube changed the way they store their flv files. Therefore, all solutions I found up until now don't work.
Does anyone have an idea?
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Given I have a live .ts file, is it possible to serve a static HLS playlist to embed the single ts file without segmenting it.
I am looking at playing in AVPlayer (iOS native). It is capable of playing .ts files but only if it's wrapped and served in a HLS playlist. Is there any special tags or version in need to support this usecase or is this not possible?
The goal here is to trick HLS into doing progressive download of the transport stream.
I'm gonna big to say no, it's not possible. Even if it "worked" it's unsupported and could stop working any minute. There are many, many (many, many) free, open source, commercial, official, unofficial, etc, segmenters available, including ffmpeg. Just use one.
I'm currently using AVAssetWriter to take a video saved on disk and transcode it to lower bitrates. This works fine. Ultimately, I would like to have the iPhone create the necessary TS and M3U8 files to then send to a server. I've looked everywhere for examples of how to do this but I have had no luck. My understanding is that MPEG-2 TS only differs in the header structure, but I'm weary of messing with the file directly.
Any thoughts around how to approach this?
Problem:
To get an iOS app that streams video accepted into the app store, we need to have a HLS version.
What’s the problem?
Android does not support HLS well, and for other reasons, we need to store MP4 and HLS files of the same content.
What’s the difference between MP4 and HLS and why do you need to store both?
MP4 is a container that stores H.264 video and AAC audio for best compatibility in HTML 5 browsers – jsvideo players often have flash fallback if the browser does not support MP4 video in HTML 5 that use the same MP4 file, but played through flash.
HLS is a protocol where text files (.m3u8) contain references to playlists, which themselves reference .ts files (or m2ts), which are mpeg-2 transport streams, not to be confused with mpeg-2 video. The .ts files are containers for the same H.264 video and AAC audio.
Why am I complaining?
It takes time to create the HLS files and playlists from the MP4 files
(Most importantly) We are now storing twice as much data on S3
Why should I care? If your S3 bill is $10K per month for storing both MP4 and HLS, now it is only $5K. Or put another way, if you are paying $100K for storing data in MP4, it would cost $200K to store the same content in both MP4 and HLS.
What do I want?
I want to store only the .ts files and serve both desktop users, iOS users, and Android users with that single file.
Is it possible?
Doesn’t HLS require 5-10 second .ts segments instead of one big file?
As of IETF draft 7, and version 4 of the protocol, HLS supports the tag EXT-X-BYTERANGE which allows you to specify a media segment as a byte range (subrange) of a larger URL.
Are .ts files compatible with HTML5 video?
Apparently not. They are a different container than MP4, yet contain the same video and audio content. Worth looking into how to store the raw video/audio data once and simply using the correct containers when necessary. If JS video players can convert HTML 5 MP4 files into Flash video on the fly if the browser does not support HTML 5 MP4, then why not be able to do the same with M2TS data?
I might be ignorant on some level, but maybe someone can shed some light on this issue, and possibly present a solution.
There currently is no good solution.
A little background.
Video streaming used to require custom protocols such as RTP/RTMP/RTSP etc. These protocols work fine except, we were basically building two separate networks. One HTTP based for standard web traffic, and the other one. The idea came along to split video into little chunks and serve them to the player over HTTP. This way we do not need special servers/software and we could take advantage of the giant HTTP CDNs that were being built. In addition. because the video was split into chunks, we can can encode the same video into different qualities/file sizes. Then the player can choose the best quality video for its current bandwidth. This was the perfect solution for mobile because of the constant changing network conditions. Several competing standard were developed. Move networks was the first to market [citation needed]. The design was copied by Microsoft (Smooth Streaming) and Apple (HTTP Live streaming aka HLS). Microsoft is phasing out smooth streaming in favor of DASH. DASH looks like it will become the default streaming solution of the future. Except, because of its design-by-comity approach, it has basically been stuck in comity for a few years. Now, in those few years, Apple sold Millions of IOS devices. So HLS can not just be discontinued. Why doesn't everyone just use HLS then? I can think of three reasons 1) Its Apples standard, and people are haters. 2) Transport streams are a complicate file format. and 3) Transport streams a patent encumbered. MP4 is not patent encumbered but it also does not have the adaptive abilities. This make user experience poor on 2G networks. The only network supported by the iPhone 1. Also AT&T at the time did not want full bitrate video streamed over there woefully inadequate celular network. HLS was the compromise. All of this predates HTML5. So the video tag was not even considered in its design.
Addressing your points:
1) It takes time to create the HLS files and playlists from the MP4
files
This is a programing website, Automate it.
2) We are now storing twice as much data on S3
[sic] I want to store only the .ts files and serve both desktop users,
iOS users, and Android users with that single file.
You and me both man :).
Possible solutions.
1) What is specifically wrong with Androids implementation? (except for lack of in older devices)
2) JW player can play HLS (Not sure about on android)
3) Server side transmux on demand.
Doesn’t HLS require 5-10 second .ts segments instead of one big file?
You can do byte-ranges, but you need to make sure all devices you are interested in support it.
If JS video players can convert HTML 5 MP4 files into Flash video on
the fly if the browser does not support HTML 5 MP4, then why not be
able to do the same with M2TS data?
They don't convert. Flash natively supports mp4. It is possible to convert TS in AS3/JS. I have done it. JW player can convert TS in browser. video.js may be able to as well.
I am uploading videos to SQL SERVER SQL database using MVC. So far I can programmatically download unprocessed videos to my Computer process them eg convert to desired format/generate thumbnails/ etc etc and reupload the videos. I am using VLC Command Line [I know this might get me thumbs down but hey it works.] and a custom program. I read a lot about FFMPEG but most examples are in PHP and I am yet to come across any MVC example. I am thinking of transitioning to FFMPEG but want to ask people if the right place for FFMPEG is on the SERVER or on a PC? And can you point me to any examples/tutorials of FFMPEG in MVC/ASP.
Everyone knows about there instructional videos http://delphi.wikia.com/wiki/Delphi_Videos but I want to watch them on my iPad when I go on vacation.
The problem is the videos are in swf and will not play on my iPad. Does any know of another source for these videos in another format?
Thanks.
For the moment flash video is the container of choice for most video content on the internet. Saif is right. If you want those specific videos you'll need to convert them yourself. There are several decent flv to mp4 converters available for free (Miro comes to mind). SWF is takes a bit more work to extract the video content.
Now if you are looking for Delphi content that's already available in MPEG 4 you can try http://edn.embarcadero.com/tv. The content from the most recent Coderage event is available as an mp4 download.
You can convert them into a proper format using a free video convert like Any Video Converter
I've had reasonable success watching on-line Flash content on my iPad using iOSFlashVideo.
Not tried it on off-line flash files though.
--jeroen