video.js HLS Tech

A video.js tech that plays HLS video on platforms that don't support it but have Flash.

Getting Started

Download the tech. On your web page:

<script src="video.js"></script>
<script src="videojs-hls.min.js"></script>
<script>
  var player = videojs('video', {
    techOrder: ['html5', 'hls', 'flash']
  });
  player.play();
</script>

Documentation

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) has become a de-facto standard for streaming video on mobile devices thanks to its native support on iOS and Android. There are a number of reasons independent of platform to recommend the format, though:

• Supports (client-driven) adaptive bitrate selection
• Delivered over standard HTTP ports
• Simple, text-based manifest format
• No proprietary streaming servers required

Unfortunately, all the major desktop browsers except for Safari are missing HLS support. That leaves web developers in the unfortunate position of having to maintain alternate renditions of the same video and potentially having to forego HTML-based video entirely to provide the best desktop viewing experience.

This tech attempts to address that situation by providing a polyfill for HLS on browsers that have Flash support. You can deploy a single HLS stream, code against the regular HTML5 video APIs, and create a fast, high-quality video experience across all the big web device categories.

The videojs-hls tech is still working towards a 1.0 release so it may not fit your requirements today. Specifically, there is no support for:

• Alternate audio and video tracks
• Subtitles
• Segment codecs other than H.264 with AAC audio
• Internet Explorer < 10

Options

You may pass in an options object to the hls tech at player initialization. You can pass in options just like you would for any other tech:

videojs(video, {
  techOrder: ['hls'],
  hls: {
    withCredentials: true
  }
});

withCredentials

Type: boolean

When the withCredentials property is set to true, all XHR requests for manifests and segments would have withCredentials set to true as well. This enables storing and passing cookies from the server that the manifests and segments live on. This has some implications on CORS because when set, the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header cannot be set to *, also, the response headers require the addition of Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header which is set to true. See html5rocks's article for more info.

Runtime Properties

player.hls.playlists.master

Type: object

An object representing the parsed master playlist. If a media playlist is loaded directly, a master playlist with only one entry will be created.

player.hls.playlists.media

Type: function

A function that can be used to retrieve or modify the currently active media playlist. The active media playlist is referred to when additional video data needs to be downloaded. Calling this function with no arguments returns the parsed playlist object for the active media playlist. Calling this function with a playlist object from the master playlist or a URI string as specified in the master playlist will kick off an asynchronous load of the specified media playlist. Once it has been retreived, it will become the active media playlist.

player.hls.mediaIndex

Type: number

The index of the next video segment to be downloaded from player.hls.media.

player.hls.selectPlaylist

Type: function

A function that returns the media playlist object to use to download the next segment. It is invoked by the tech immediately before a new segment is downloaded. You can override this function to provide your adaptive streaming logic. You must, however, be sure to return a valid media playlist object that is present in player.hls.master.

Events

loadedmetadata

Fired after the first media playlist is downloaded for a stream.

loadedmanifest

Fired immediately after a new master or media playlist has been downloaded. By default, the tech only downloads playlists as they are needed.

Testing

For testing, you can either run npm test or use grunt directly. If you use npm test, it will only run the karma tests using chrome. You can specify which browsers you want the tests to run via grunt's test task. You can use either grunt-style arguments or comma separated arguments:

grunt test:chrome:firefox   # grunt-style
grunt test:chrome,firefox   # comma-separated

Possible options are:

• chromecanary
• phantomjs
• opera
• chrome
• safari
• firefox
• ie

Hosting Considerations

Unlike a native HLS implementation, the HLS tech has to comply with the browser's security policies. That means that all the files that make up the stream must be served from the same domain as the page hosting the video player or from a server that has appropriate CORS headers configured. Easy instructions are available for popular webservers and most CDNs should have no trouble turning CORS on for your account.

MBR Rendition Selection Logic

In situations where manifests have multiple renditions, the player will go through the following algorithm to determine the best rendition by bandwidth and viewport dimensions.

• Start on index 0 as defined in the HLS Spec (link above)
• On a successful load complete per segment determine the following;
  • player.hls.bandwidth set to value as segment byte size over download time
  • Viewport width/height as determined by player.width()/player.height()
  • Playlists mapped and sorted by BANDWIDTH less than or equal to 1.1x player.hls.bandwidth
  • Best playlist variant by BANDWIDTH determined
  • Subset of bandwidth appropriate renditions mapped
  • Subset validated for RESOLUTION attributes less than or equal to player dimensions
  • Best playlist variant by RESOLUTION determined
• Result is as follows;
  • [Best RESOLUTION variant] OR [Best BANDWIDTH variant] OR [inital playlist in manifest]

Release History

• 0.6.0:
  • Refactor playlist loading
  • Add testing via karma
• 0.5.0: cookie-based content protection support (see withCredentials)
• 0.4.0: Live stream support
• 0.3.0: Performance fixes for high-bitrate streams
• 0.2.0: Basic playback and adaptive bitrate selection
• 0.1.0: Initial release