Conquer Adaptive HTTP Streaming with OSMF

Have you been hearing all the buzz about adaptive HTTP streaming?  Probably not.  So, here’s all you need to know about
Adaptive HTTP and how it compares to dynamic RTMP…. and other agile-sounding acronyms. 

As I noted here there’s basically two kinds of video delivery,  progressive download and streaming.  Now there’s a second method of streaming, called Adaptive Streaming.  Apple has its own proprietary method and requires it for the iPhone and iPad (of course).  And Flash has a method that won’t make you wait for HTML5 to get popular before getting your hands on it. 

The traditional method of streaming used the RTMP (Real Time M Protocol) and it represented a big step forward to “Wait-less” video streaming.  There’s no need to buffer, streaming allows you to modulate the quality of the video that’s being served and send you the video just a few seconds of video at a time, just before you needed it.  The only real issue with RTMP is that it could be expensive depending on the server you chose, and if you didn’t have your firewall settings just right, you could see some reduced performance due to having to tunnel it through the HTTP port 80. 

HTTP solves the tunneling headache, and even better it works on that fickle line of Apple mobile devices.  Because it naturally goes through that port, it doesn’t have any lost performance in the transition from one port to another.  The Apple Live Streaming service allows it work with HTML5 on the iPad and iPod. 

The big complicator in HTTP is that the video you would have used to do your RTMP streaming, has to be processed into a bunch of tiny pieces, and connected with manifest files.  There’s plenty of support to automate that process, so not a huge deal.  But then you have to build a video player capable, of working with the server to read those files, and continually request the right file based on video timeline position and available bandwidth.  If somehow, that doesn’t sound like a lot of work, trust me it is. 

Enter the OSMF (Open Source Media Framework) and their hyper-simplified, “we’ve already done it for you, your welcome” StrobeMediaPlayback video player.  There is some inflexibility in the player (a.k.a. you can’t skin it, or change anything but the background color of the UI) but at least a hundred or so lines of code have been taken off your shoulders.  Nice.  If you’re interested in a half-step, that’s more customizable there is a source library that can lend you more freedom without leaving you in the cold. 

So, at this point it’s not certain which framework is going to be the prevailing method, or if it will become purely dependent on whether someone wants to play the video on an iProduct. 

Stay tuned… very nerdy updates to come. 
N

@bluish_yellow