Is there any way to stream mkv files on webpage using javascript/html or any other technologies? I found many questions about this, but I really want to know the answer - is this possible in any way? Maybe ajax, javascript, php, html? Maybe some external libraries? Anything?
I was wondering how youtube works. Is there possible to upload mkv file? Is so, how that videos are streaming to end user?
I know that browser doesn't support mkv natively, but maybe is some way to forcing html to do that?
Any help will be appreciated.
YouTube most probably works using the DASH protocol format. On the server side, the source audio and source video are separately divided into segments of different bitrate/quality. A manifest keeps an index of all possible segments values and their location. This allows to switch quality during playback in the player.
On the client side, the DASH (should be the same with the other main technology: HLS) manifest is used by the player to locate the segments to load in order to feed the content in two separate SourceBuffer, one for audio and one for video and both are being played synchronously together in the MediaSource. For an example player that handles this, see the Shaka Player developed by Google.
Conclusion, there is no need to use a container like mkv but each channel (video, audio) needs to point to a browser supported codec encoded segments.
You don't need anything special for streaming pre-recorded media files. A normal HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2 server will work just fine. The browser is generally capable of seeking into the file using range requests.
Matroska (MKV) is a container format, and it actually is widely supported because it's basically the same as WebM. WebM is a subset of Matroska... the key differences being that there are suggested codecs for use. (Matroska itself supports almost anything.)
Your audio and video tracks in the file can use a variety of codecs... the key is to use codecs compatible with browsers. Opus for audio and VP8 for video will take you far.
From there, simply reference your video file in a <video> tag.
Related
I have an MP4 video that is variable bitrate, so the average bitrate doesn't necessarily stay consistent throughout the entire file. Because my video is a capture of a computer screen, some parts of the video are very low bitrate because nothing is happening, and other parts are a much higher bitrate because there's a lot of activity on the screen.
How does Chrome decide how much video to buffer for progressive download HTTP(S) videos? I'm running into a problem where Chrome tends to buffer too little, so playback stutters.
If there's no way of convincing Chrome to download a certain time of video (and I don't want to just preload the entire thing), can I author the MP4 some special way to solve the problem? I'm using FFmpeg and MP4Box. Maybe it's up to the HTTP server?
If you want more control over the playback of the video, you should definitely check out MediaSourceExtensions. They define a whole model for video playback, defining sourceBuffers where you can put video data, etc.
Beware it is not a simple to use API still, and the information on how to use it is very fragmented.
In your case, if you go the MSE route, you can either keep using h264 (which is probably the codec your mp4 is wrapping) or switch to webm.
In case of going the MP4, h264 route, you'll need to generate a fragmented MP4 (fMP4) and write some JavaScript to control the way you work with the MP4 fragments (segments in MSE parlance).
MP4Box has support for the -dash protocol, which will segment an MP4 in a way that is suitable for consumption via MSE. FFmpeg also has support for generating fragmented MP4.
I use JWPlayer to play videos from the server. Videos are encoded using h.264 codec. If i open them in browser with h.264 support - video plays nicely and i can seek it, because server returns 206 header browser understands that its partial content. But if i try to play same video on Opera, for example, flash player is being used and it receives 200 OK! 2 problems here:
I can't seek the video, until part of it is downloaded
If the video is not "properly" encoded player can't even start playing it, until file is fully downloaded.
Is there something wrong with flash properly asking/understanding http headers?(i've never worked with flash before, so maybe my question is a bit silly and i just don't know flash's limitations)..
1) You need to have pseudo streaming enabled, for Flash - http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player/28855/pseudo-streaming-in-flash, if you can provide a link though, I will take a look at exactly what is going on here, I am more or less guessing about this one. HTML5 does not require a pseudo streaming module to be installed on the server side, though. In Flash, the default is progressive download, so you can only seek to downloaded parts, and in html5, this is not the case.
2) Yes, that is because of encoding. If your MP4 files cannot be seeked before they are completely downloaded, you will have to fix the MOOV atom (it contains the seeking information) located at the end of your video. Use this little application to parse your videos and add the necessary cue points - http://renaun.com/blog/2010/06/qtindexswapper-2/
Also, encoding via HandBrake - http://handbrake.fr/, can fix this as well, so the above tool wouldn't be necessary. You can encode using HandBrake, and enable "web optimized", which does the same this as the Index Swapper Tool. HandBrake also has command line encoding options as well.
I have several MPEG2 Transport Stream videos with KLV metadata embedded in them. I would like to display the videos in a web browser. Is it possible to use the HTML5 <video> tag to play a video of this type in a web browser?
If I use a converter to pull the video out of the MPEG-TS container and create an MPEG4 file encoded with H.264, then I can get the video to show up in a browser. But is there any possible way I could display these videos without having to convert them into a different format? I need to keep the KLV data around so I can do other stuff with it.
The actual video codec support is still up to the browser, but some support MPEG2-TS natively as a transport, and if they don't you can do software demuxing using hls.js. Reading KLV is an unresolved issue but you "should" (per that issue) be able to access the raw binary stream and parse out the values yourself -- not trivial, as such, but doable.
There is no browser that support mpeg2.
You can use service like: vid.ly and have all the formats you need.
I am trying to embed video files (wmv, mpg, avi, mov, etc.) dynamically by creating embed elements in javascript. The problem I am running in to is this has not been very reliable across all browsers and even if it does work, there is no guarantee that the end user has the required plugin to play the video. Ideally, I would convert everything to flv or an HTML5 video format but this is not currently possible due to cpu/disk space restrictions (these are videos uploaded by the end user, not me). I feel like this shouldn't be as difficult as it has presented itself to be - does anyone have any suggestions?
To the day VLC release a browser plug-in, the best way is to convert them to .FLV or .MP4 files server side. And use a free Flash video player for the playback (I mean HTML5 with Flash fallback).
If you do not want to convert those videos, let the end user directly download the files. And deal with the problem of multiple video format himself.
edit:
Or you could move your website out of the HTML browser, and build a desktop software, that can take charge of all those videos format, client side.
edit2:
Use Youtube API or any other already existing video hosting services. Personally I will avoid this solution.
The only way to do it reliably is with flash. Use ffmpeg to convert incoming videos to .FLV and use a flash player.
For the last two month I have been trying to "fool" safari into thinking that it's looking at a file on the server, which in fact is a live video stream from a camera encoded and muxed upon request using Gstreamer into a format that is supported by the browser. Since HTML5 supports progressive video downloads this should at least be possible in theory.
My conclusion is that this gets quite complicated considering that browsers make a partial content request when downloading video files in HTML5, mainly for the sake of seeking. If the server lacks support for this feature the video is not played until the file is completely downloaded.
Have anyone else tried this approach with more success? Or should I just give up and wait for true live video support like RTSP to be integrated into browsers.
Cheers.
This article provides some useful tips: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Configuring_servers_for_Ogg_media
Are you serving the X-content-duration header?
You have two possibilies.
With H.264 you can emulate a file with fragmented structure: ISO container (.mp4) with movie fragment atoms (MOOF's).
The other option is Google's WebM. Clients can "join in" the stream any time thanks to MKV file's structure. For best results the first frame transmitted to the client should be akeyframe.
If you only need video but not audio, "Motion JPEG" can do it. It's not HTML5 but a Netscape-era feature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_JPEG#M-JPEG_over_HTTP