[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Add Apple HTTP Live Streaming protocol handler

[Ronald S. Bultje]

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Martin Storsj? <martin at martin.st> wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Jul 2010, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
>> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 7:23 AM, Martin Storsj? <martin at martin.st> wrote:
>> > Secondly, currently the implementation takes a full url to a playlist
>> > after the applehttp:// part, such as
>> > applehttp://http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/samples/bipbop/bipbopall.m3u8.
>> > This allows using other underlying protocols, too, such as https:// (if
>> > we'd ever implement that), or file:// for fetching the playlist locally -
>> > mostly for testing. As another alternative, the urls could simply be
>> > applehttp://devimages.apple.com/..., not allowing any other underlying
>> > protocols than normal http, but making the urls look slightly less weird.
>>
>> Why is this not a demuxer? It seems it's a playlist.
>
> Yes, it's a playlist, but with some minor details - each segment is
> intended to follow straight on after the previous one, without resetting
> demuxers/decoders inbetween, etc. Also, for live streams, the playlist is
> a sliding window of current segments, so it has to reload the playlist
> regularly in those cases.
>
>> Playlist support in FFmpeg might be near-nonexistant and require some
>> significant extensions to the demuxer layer, but implementing it as a
>> protocol does not sound quite right...
>
> I thought about doing it as a demuxer, too, but implementing it that way
> would be way much more work, with setting up a chained demuxer and
> whatnot.
[..]
> Protocol as name may feel incorrect, but as in the "opaque bytestream" as
> URLProtocols in libavformat actually are, I think the choice feels quite
> right.

I think that's only true for as long as FFmpeg has virtually no
playlist support.

Imagine a situation where playlist support (implemented as discussed
in the past) is 100% functional in FFmpeg. Would you now still
implement this particular playlist as a protocol?

Ronald