Re: [LINK] Video streaming
On Tuesday I received an off-Link response from Irene Graham as she was unable to post directly to Link. Irene identified a likely problem with SBS On-Demand, and her first email is copied below to set the context. I'll follow that with an edited version of my last response. DavidL. -- Forwarded Message -- From: rene To: Sent: Sat, 3 Feb 2018 16:54:04 +1000 Subject: Re: [LINK] Video streaming On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 14:47:34 +1100, David wrote: > Once upon a time I could happily play ABC iView and SBS on-demand videos. > But now I have the latest Linux, Firefox & Videolan packages with H.264 > support, and Flash, and nothing much works at all. I'm not an expert in those sort of issues, but based on my recent investigations into video playing, using (un-common) Windows browsers such as Palemoon and Vivaldi (because I prefer to avoid Firefox and Chrome)... In relatively recent times, some sites have started using "HLS adaptive streaming" which has content types: application/vnd.apple.mpegurl (.M3U8) and video/MP2T (.ts): * I'm fairly sure that a browser, or whatever, having "H.264 support" does not necessarily mean that it can play videos sent via "HLS adaptive streaming", but I've not been able to find out what other "support" is needed. (I think, but am far from sure, that it's something to do with codecs). * Sites using "HLS adaptive streaming" include-SBS on-demand, and Fairfax (via its use of the Brightcove player, and/or JW Player) https://support.brightcove.com/delivering-hls-video https://support.jwplayer.com/customer/portal/articles/1430240 Sites using "HLS adaptive streaming" as first priority such as SBS seem to say on help pages that they'll fall back to Flash if the browser/etc doesn't support it, but my efforts to force fallback to Flash tend to suggest many "help" pages are probably out of date, i.e. they don't fallback. My suspicion is they might fallback if the browser indicates no support at all for "HTML5 video" playing, but if a browser indicates even "partial" support, no fallback, and by now most browsers probably report at least partial suppport. > SBS on-demand doesn't work at all, but I don't think it uses Flash (?). The > Firefox browser console displays a mass of diagnostics beginning with "Error: > window.SBS.ensighten is undefined". "ensighten" imo strongly suggests advert and/or tracker service supplier, see: https://www.ensighten.com/ For initial trouble shooting purposes, if not already done, I suggest try viewing videos on SBS with all ad blockers and/or script blockers completely turned off. A couple of months ago SBS were definitely sending adverts at the beginning of a video (whether news items, or on-demand content) and nothing would play if advert blocked. However, today, it seems to me they're not sending adverts (but maybe my eventual browser setup has outfoxed them). If they are sending adverts, it's very likely the advert at the start of an item will run fine (because it's likely from YouTube with a content type that is *not* "video/MP2T" i.e. is *not* HLS Adaptive Streaming), but then when SBS's own content/video starts, it probably will be "video/MP2T" and won't play, or the audio or image will be distorted. BTW, arguably interestingly, it seems that Netflix, Stan and Foxtel-Now (all of which I've trialled recently) do not use the "HLS adaptive streaming" method. Yet Netflix and Stan are nevertheless capable of allowing the client to select preferred data download usage rate from 2 or 3 options). They just work fine (as does Foxtel-Now if one one spoofs user-agent string to equal Chrome), even using an un-common Windows browser. Since they're pay-to-view services, that leads me to suspect that problems trying to to view SBS and Fairfax *might* perhaps have more to do with blocking advert and tracking services than anything else. One other possible issue is that if the site is sending "protected content", then the browser/whatever likely needs to have the "Widevine Content Decryption" Module, or similar, installed. Irene ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Video streaming
Hi Irene, On Tuesday, 6 February 2018 16:33:46 AEDT you wrote: > Also since trying to post the appended message to Link, I've remembered this > HTML5 video test site: > https://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html > Hopefully that would help you figure out what type of "HTML5" videos your > installation can/can't play. If they all play fine, then I reckon problem is > very likely "HLS Adaptive Streaming" (which is *not* one of the modes tested > on that site) as referred to in below message. Those videos do indeed play perfectly and I'm sure you've identified the problem, which is HLS streaming. --- On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 19:03:07 AEDT you wrote: > This page, I found today, tends to me to suggest that pre win8, or win10, > "Windows" may have had zero support: > https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2015/01/29/simplified-adaptive-video-streaming-announcing-support-for-hls-and-dash-in-windows-10/ > > That page also helpfully offers several example "HLS Adaptive Streaming" > pages: > http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ > https://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/117827379 > http://www.twitch.tv/riotgames/mobile > > All of those are definitely sending "HLS Adaptive Streaming" and work fine in > my Firefox and Vivaldi, which increasingly leads me to suspect there's > something very strange about SBS setup. And none of those work for me, in fact all return an immediate diagnostic: - "This browser is not supported" (NASA) - "Aw shucks. This video can’t be played with your current setup." (Vimeo) - "6000: Renderer not available" (Twitch). --- > I'd given up on the video streaming issue for the time being, but your post > to Link reinvigorated it :-) Problem for me is not major, just that it annoys > me that I cannot figure out why SBS videos will not play in my currently > preferred browser (Vivaldi - Chrome based, but much more privacy/user > friendly imo). I'm about to give up on the ABC altogether. The iView techies have always seemed to me to have a history of infatuation with technology; very early on they adopted a take-it-or-leave-it attitude by requiring Google Chrome. They seem uninterested in standards compliance, including HTML5, or even technical descriptions of what they actually do. And although they're not yet using HLS for video, they seem to be using it for radio - see http://radio.abc.net.au/help/streams e.g. http://www.abc.net.au/res/streaming/audio/hls/itinerant_one.m3u8 Now SBS seem to have gone down the same track. Wikipedia has a good article on HLS, which was developed by Apple and submitted to the IETF as a draft RFC (application/vnd.apple.mpegurl). A copy dated August 2017 is available at https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8216 and it contains this statement: QUOTE Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other RFC stream. The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at its discretion and makes no statement about its value for implementation or deployment. Documents approved for publication by the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841. UNQUOTE So the question is this: Why is SBS relying on a technology with absolutely no standards support, and very little support by major manufacturers? HLS support is summarised in the Wikipedia article, and includes the following under "Live Streaming": - Google Chrome (partial support for Android & iOS, unsupported on desktop OSes). - Firefox (partial support from 50.0 for Android, 57.0 for others; current desktop version is 52.6.0). - VLC Media Player (partial support for HLC V3 in VLC 2.x, VLC V3 will have full support). - JW Player SDK (full support). - Vivaldi & Pale Moon browsers not listed. There is a fallback mechanism to Flash, but I'm not clear whether it's in HTML5 or the "partial" support for HLS in various browsers. In any case, Flash is essentially dead as even Adobe have admitted. The HLS.js project at https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/tree/master is said to be "quite reliable nowadays" and to support Firefox Desktop V42+, IE11+ for Windows 8.1+, Vivaldi, and Opera, among others. Later comment by IG: > Hmm, that github page says the relevant script is: > https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/hls.js@latest > and that is *definitely* one of the scripts that SBS downloads, and if it's > blocked, their on-demand videos won't play. That page also says that entities > using "hls.js in production" include "Akamai", which is where SBS downloads > it's videos from - I'm 98% sure they're using "Akamai Adaptive Media Player" So there we are. Best wishes, DavidL. ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Video streaming
On Fri, 2018-02-09 at 13:18 +1100, David wrote: > -- Forwarded Message -- > From: rene > Once upon a time I could happily play ABC iView and SBS on-demand > > videos. But now I have the latest Linux, Firefox & Videolan > > packages with H.264 support, and Flash, and nothing much works at > > all. For SBS in particular, check out webdl https://bitbucket.org/delx/webdl Regards, K. -- ~~~ Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: A0CD 28F0 10BE FC21 C57C 67C1 19A6 83A4 9B0B 1D75 Old fingerprint: A52E F6B9 708B 51C4 85E6 1634 0571 ADF9 3C1C 6A3A ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
