stream a single audio file from the internet - iphone

I am using the AFNetworking suite in my app. In the app you can record a message, which uploads to a server. I need to be able to play that audio file either by streaming it or chaching it, an ideas on how to do either?
Cheers

Honestly, I would just use AVPlayer and load the remote URL. Per Apple's documentation:
AVPlayer works equally well with local and remote media files, providing you with appropriate information about readiness to play or about the need to await additional data before continuing.
It's certainly possible to use AFNetworking to do this, but I trust that Apple's built-in AVPlayer will be more than suitable to your needs, and certainly worth a shot before rolling your own.

If you want to play a mp3 that is located on the server you can use Matt Galagher's Audiostreamer (http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/06/revisiting-old-post-streaming-and.html).
If you want to play a locally saved file you can use AVAudioPlayer (http://developer.apple.com/library/IOS/#documentation/AVFoundation/Reference/AVAudioPlayerClassReference/Reference/Reference.html).
If that is not what you want please give us some more datails.

Related

Saving m3u8 video to disk in swift cocoa

I am trying to save any m3u8 stream playlist as video to disk as 1 complete video file, similar to vlc. I can create an AVAsset and play it in an AVPlayer fine, however the m3u8 links i have tried all return false from asset.isExportable so using AVAssetExportSession does not work. I thought it might be possible opening the link as an InputStream and then writing it to an OutputStream but was lost on how to do this. Is this a viable option or will it only return the actual m3u8 file instead of the .ts video links? Any guidance in the right direction would be appreciated. I am fine doing the research on how to use the different classes, i'm just kinda lost on where to go from here.
Thank you,
Phil
Building a single video from all the streams in a m3u8 playlist may not actually give you what you want, depending on the m3u8 file.
This is because m3u8 playlists can contain multiple bit rate versions for a single video - so if you added them all together you would get the same video with different quality levels (bit rates) one after another.
Its also worth noting that some videos streams will be encrypted, in fact most high value streams such as Netflix etc will be, so downloading them will not allow you to play them back unless you do it as part of the providers own 'download and go' service.
Finally, some services may make it hard for you to access the streams by requiring some form of authentication in parallel with the video stream URL.
Assuming all the above is fine or does not apply in your case, then the video files themselves can be downloaded as files using a HTTP downloading function. Good examples of these exist such as: https://stackoverflow.com/a/35510812/334402

Streaming audio/video to iPhone other than http server

I find most of streaming audio discussions are about the streaming media from http server, e.g. AudioStreamer from cocoa with love or MPMoviePlayerController. They both init with NSURL. But my case is other than that. I use SMB to access the media files on some window shared server. The media content is got with SMB message (thru socket) and is accumulated in memory (NSMutableData)
So is there a way to play them (those NSMutableData) before download is finished ?
Update, so for streaming audio I understand I need audio queue service.
What about stream video other than http? I think it is doable because there is a free app called TIOD which does not only stream audio but also video from SMB server.
BTW, I never expect others to do work for me. I check all the document I can find and can't find a way to do it (for video). I had thought, well, that may mean it can't be done. But then I find TIOD can do that. That's why I raised the quesion in the first place to see if other has experiences for it.
Yea you can stream that as well, its the same thing as getting the data from an NSURL... if you look at audio streaming example by matt gallagher here you see that he is getting data from some URL, but ultimatly when he calls the parse function he is giving it bytes of data, same things should apply for your situation, with the data you get you should be able to call the parse function and have the Audio Player stream your audio file..

Play MP3 audio data on iPhone

I need to play mp3 audio data in iPhone continuously. I am getting continuous mp3 data via server in iPhone. Now I need to play this data in iPhone. I cannot access url to play as it is of mms protocol. So, for playing this type of data which is the best method to use. Can anyone help me out with this thing.
Thanks in advance.
You have a few options sanctioned by or directly from Apple. You should look into:
Core Audio and the Audio Toolbox
The AVFoundation Framework
The OpenAL Framework
Also, you can try Matt Gallagher's AudioStreamer class. It should be able to do the job, or at least help you figure out how to do so, if you look at the code.
Between those four options, there should be something to help.
NOTE:
After writing this, I did a bit of Googling and I found this thread that discusses the possibility of streaming MMS media to iPhone. It appears that it is not possible, due to the cost of a license from Microsoft. In theory, the above-mentioned frameworks should do everything you need, but it seems that you cannot because of the licensing issue.
Good luck!
audioPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc]initWithData:<#(NSData )data#> error:<#(NSError *)outError#>];
try this else tell me more clear what you want to do

iPhone: HTTP live streaming without any server side processing

I want to be able to (live) stream the frames/video FROM the iPhone camera to the internet. I've seen in a Thread (streaming video FROM an iPhone) that it's possible using AVCaptureSession's beginConfiguration and commitConfiguration. But I don't know how to start designing this task. There are already a lot of tutorials about how to stream video TO the iPhone, and it is not actually what I am searching for.
Could you guys give me any ideas which could help me further?
That's a tricky one. You should be able to do it, but it won't be easy.
One way that wouldn't be live (not answering your need, but worth mentioning) is to capture from the camera and save it to a video file. see the AV Foundation Guide on how to do that. Once saved you can then use the HTTP Live Streaming segmenter to generate the proper segments. Apple has applications for Mac OSX, but there's an open source version as well that you could adapt for iOS. On top of that, you'd also have to run an http server to serve those segments. Lots of http servers out there you could adapt.
But to do it live, first as you have already found, you need to collect frames from the camera. Once you have those you want to convert them to h.264. For that you want ffmpeg. Basically you shove the images to ffmpeg's AVPicture, making a stream. Then you'd need to manage that stream so that the live streaming segmenter recognized it as a live streaming h.264 device. I'm not sure how to do that, and it sounds like some serious work. Once you've done that, then you need to have an http server, serving that stream.
What might actually be easier would be to use an RTP/RTSP based stream instead. That approach is covered by open source versions of RTP and ffmpeg supports that fully. It's not http live streaming, but it will work well enough.

Simultaneously stream and save a video?

I'm writing an app, part of which allows the user stream/play videos. I want to restrict the functionality so that they can only stream videos if they have a WiFi connection. I will then save the video so that when they have a 3G only (or lesser) connection they can't stream videos and can only replay videos that are saved on the phone.
Ideally, I'd like to get MPMoviePlayerController to stream/play the movie and then access the movie data and save it. However, the MPMoviePlayerController api doesn't seem to support access to the movie data.
I'd like to avoid and download-then-play scenario. Any ideas?
Two solutions come to mind.
Both this solutions require that the file is in a format that can be played progressive, e.g. that you don't need the whole file to be able to play it (but that would be a prerequisite anyway).
use a thread to download the data and append it to a file, and play the file from another thread. Now, that requires that you can handle EOF events in the MPMoviePlayerController and pause the playing until the cache file is appended to and then resume for the same point.
So far what I've seen people doing this it doesn't work because MPMoviePlayerController can't handle the EOF event. (not tested it my self yet) [Caching videos to disk after successful preload by MPMoviePlayerController
Skip the playing from a file and setup a local HTTP server and stream from that (on localhost). This is also not tested.
The idea is that MPMoviePlayerController would handlle the event of missing data better from a HTTP stream then from reading the file directly.
Downside might be that it is less efficient, but I think that is a minor increase in CPU. I don't know if the network interface would handle it, but I'm assuming it's not an issue.
I leave this answer as a wiki, because I don't have a working solution but I too want one.
There is a way to make this work, but you have to write your own HTTP Live Streaming downloader.
Basically, you parse the .m3u8 file (it's a pretty simple standard, but can get tricky with alternate streams and the possibility that the stream will simply drop out and need a new playlist to continue) and then download the chunks in .ts format to your local storage, say the Documents folder or Caches etc.
Then you'll have to set up a local HTTP server to allow the MPMoviePlayerController or AVPlayer to access the files over HTTP (since they won't touch a local file path), including a re-coded playlist file pointing to the local files, which you'll have to create yourself from the original playlist(s).
CocoaHTTPServer works great for this.
Once you've done all that, it works great. It's unavoidable that you get a little delay while you download the first chunk or two before presenting your local HTTP URL to the movie player, but after that you get seamless download, recording and preview playback.
Good luck!
the iPhone is using progressive download so it will not save on the device. For that you need to explicitly download it and then play the video from your local folder.