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What streaming protocols do browsers support for WebM

2 points by ucee054 ↗ HN
Dear HN,

Any ideas on what protocols browsers support for streaming <video>?

I have seen only video tags of the form <video src=http://server/video.webm> which implies to me http running over tcp, which suffers from backoff and retransmit in response to packet drop

I had assumed there would be a way to use real streaming protocols (ie rtp/rtsp/rtmp) instead but the HTML5 spec doesn't say anything about it

Also setting up a streaming server and trying to connect by each browser has not proved straightforward.

For what it's worth, my results are that streaming protocols never work with the <video> tag. I am asking the community in case I am mistaken

Many Thanks

2 comments

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wmf
Streaming protocols are in a bit of flux right now. RTSP never caught on much and it has problems with NATs because it uses UDP. RTMP is seen as a proprietary Adobe protocol. Apple, MS, and Adobe have all proposed adaptive/live streaming protocols built on HTTP, but I haven't seen much convergence. A lot of software is implementing Apple's protocol because it's the only one supported by MobileSafari.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming http://www.adobe.com/products/httpdynamicstreaming/ http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/626/smooth-streaming-technica... http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/201...

Unfortunately, these protocols are based on the MP4 or transport stream containers and AFAIK VP8 only has a mapping for Matroska, so it's not obvious how to use these protocols to stream WebM. You can find plenty of WebM "streaming" hacks, but I don't think any of them support seeking or dynamic bitrate.

http://blog.eltrovemo.com/?p=271

(BTW, this is a perfect example of how HTML5 is "killing" Flash... with inferior technology.)