[vlc-devel] [vlc-commits] commit: stream_filter/httplive.c: HTTP Live Streaming (Jean-Paul Saman )

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:23:08 +0200, Jean-Baptiste Kempf <jb at videolan.org>
wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 10:12:19AM +0300, Ilkka Ollakka wrote :
>> > Harder question:
>> >  - How is this linked to TS files? Meaning would that work with an
>> >    adaptive stream of webm files?
>>
>> It should work, but iirc draft is specified to use ts-files (or
> mp3-clips).
> 
> Yes, I know. But we discussed with Xiph.org, Gstreamer, Opera and
> Mozilla folks at FOMS to see if we could use it with a less-patented
> format. Hence the question.

The whole design assumes a /continuously streamable/ format. Except for a
Transport Stream or a raw MPEG Audio elementary stream, not much can ever
work with that protocol.

On top of that, Apple HTTP streaming is useless for VoD. It has no benefits
over normal HTTP, at least w.r.t. properly indexed file formats. Agreeably,
TS is NOT a properly indexed file format. But I expect MKV is, so Apple
HTTP would be useless there.

Then for live streaming, you cannot use MKV in any case, can you? The main
(only?) advantage of Apple HTTP over plain TS over HTTP is
time-shifting/seeking. Unfortunately, stream_filter is not at all the
correct plugin type to use if we want to support this feature.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net
http://fi.linkedin.com/in/remidenis