In Media Center 27, we have introduced a new video streaming mode using HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) Video-On-Demand.
MC has already supported HLS before, but only using HLS Live playlists, which are easier to manage, but have several limitations to usability, and also caused issues with various players (namely on iOS).
The new streaming mode should be mostly transparent to users, once a remote uses it, but it should result in more reliable playback, the ability to seek, and better compatibility to players.
JRemote2 for Android makes use of this mode in the latest update for streaming video to ChromeCast, as well as optionally using it for local playback.
In future updates, it'll come to JRemote for iOS to greatly improve video playback, as well as to Panel.
Developer note:
If you are developing your own player, you can opt-in to this streaming mode by using HLSVOD=1 inplace of HLS=1 in the MCWS video url. It'll deliver a complete playlist for the entire video file, but only segments actually being requested by the player will be encoded. This works pretty well if a player requests segments in sequential order, like any normal one would. If random segments are requested, the behavior might not be ideal.
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Topic: NEW: Video Streaming improvements using HLS Video-On-Demand (Read 2273 times)