Question

I’m building some pages that are using HTTP Live Streaming for the iPad. For some reason, the videos appear very low quality and I’m wondering if the iPad is not accurately detecting the available bandwidth.

http://m.wgbh.org/Apps/Explore/2012/1/preview_AmericasTestKitchen.cfm

…is an example. On the iPad, the video is very poor quality, whereas the source file looks great. I know the iPad is choosing the quality based on the available bandwidth, but even when on a very fast WiFi connection, it seems to choose the 110kbps stream. The video itself is being served from Amazon’s S3 CDN, so I know it’s not a network issue.

Is there a way to expose the decision the device is making about which bitrate stream to play? Is it possible to display the bitrate of the current HTTP Live Stream on the page itself?

Answer 1

AVPlayerItem *thisItem = self.player.currentItem;

for (AVPlayerItemAccessLogEvent *event  in [[thisItem accessLog] events]) {
    NSLog(@"indicated bitrate is %f", [event indicatedBitrate]);
    NSLog(@"observerd bitrate is %f", [event observedBitrate]);

}