iOS Question Stream MKV served over HTTP

[Scott Bartgis]

I would like to stream a video served over HTTP. The file is an MKV is 1.4GB. I do not think the VideoView can play this. The MKV is a multitrack format, which has subtitles and audio tracks. It is the preferred format for the rest of the devices in use, but on iOS this seems like it might be aproblem. Otherwise, it would require a large combination of MP4 files with each audio track and subtitle combination.

Is there anything resembling the VLC for iOS or a way to embed the VLC for iOS that handles this file correctly? Or a library already out there?

Ideally, something like the FFMpeg AV Player for iOS https://github.com/iMoreApps/ffmpeg-avplayer-for-ios-tvos would be library-ified.

 

[Erel]

I do not think the VideoView can play this

It is worth a try. It is simple to test it.

 

[Scott Bartgis]

My apologies for being over polite. I should have just said what I tried and found. "I do not think..." should have been "I tried and I cannot get it to work, but I'm not perfect so I don't want to commit to saying it that way."

Using Handbrake to create the files, all settings are the same, but when MKV is the container, it will not load. Same movie, same settings as MP4, works fine. Problem is that Blu-ray PGS subtitles cannot be stored in MP4, only MKV. MP4 does permit the audio tracks.

The FFMpeg project does work directly out of XCode, but I am far far far from being able to move something like that into a library component for B4i. If anyone wishes to tackle it, contact me to arrange a contract.

 

[Erel]

Note that the license of this project is not clear (at least for me).

 

[Scott Bartgis]

Is it the Dolby part that is unclear or a different part? For the Dolby license I have a lot of experience here since my company deals with Dolby and numerous other licensed codecs. We are probably the only ones who pay royalty for MP3 encoding - few people know that MP3 encoding is not free. MP3 decoding is free, but the encoder is patented.

For Dolby, the company/person distributing the app must obtain their own licensing from Dolby. It is not required that Dolby be incorporated, and most implementations of the app will not require a Dolby license. MP4 and MKV video files can incorporate Dolby audio tracks, but there is no reason to do so in a mobile-only app.

I was able to decode the Blu-ray subtitle tracks to SRT and reimport them as Vobsub for the MP4. The result is very poor. It seems the SRT extraction is character recognition requiring you to manually fix 2 hours of subtitles.

 

[Erel]

Is it the Dolby part that is unclear or a different part?

I didn't see any mention of the license of the project source code (maybe I missed it).