Question

I’m developing mobile apps for iOS and Android. Mostly iOS. One of the clients has a fairly big repository of self-created videos (70+), which the companion website hosts on Vimeo at the moment. I investigated some time to find out, that Vimeo doesn’t want and support HTTP live streaming to ease up embedding such videos in an iOS app. But perhaps I’m missing something here.

My question is: What is the best way for hosting videos to embed them in an (iOS) app? I explicitly don’t want to use an HTML frame, like UIWebView, for this.

I already have some solutions in mind:

• self-hosting, since HTTP live streaming isn’t rocket science anymore (think real networks streaming services a few years ago)
• YouTube
• Vimeo (they got their own iOS app, so they have to do some streaming for themselves, perhaps sniffing the network traffic can lighten things up)

I’m afraid this list isn’t complete. So perhaps somebody has some superb ideas on that topic. And yes, commerical plans aren’t a show stopper if they’re reasonable priced.

Answer 1

I just found out that Vimeo has introduced another paid plan apart from the established »Plus« plan: »Pro« for companies ($199/year). One of its features is HTTP live streaming. A staff member states on the forum:

We do support http live streaming. And to answer your initial question, our normal embed code will not recognize when http live streaming is appropriate, nor will it automatically switch over to it. Consequently, you will need to use a third party player with the Http live streaming link in your video’s Settings page for your video to play with http live streaming.

But there’s a one caveat at the moment: you can’t directly access the link to the HTTP streaming playlist via Vimeos API. There’s a post on their API forum where people can vote for certain features: Vimeo API forum: http live streaming link through API