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i'm trying to play HLS streamed by IIS in different bitrates on ipad (ios 6), encoded with ffmpeg. i can see that only the lowest bitrate (600k) is being played by the native player: to play it i'm just opening the main index file (.m3u8) on Safari.

is there a way to get some logs from the player to understand why this happens? tried with the Safari Developer tools but didn't get to much info from it

thanks

szatmary
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user2928842
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  • 1) maybe you simply don't have enough bandwidth to download the other versions. what happens if you forcefully download another version (each version has a seperate m3u8 - open those in safari). is the video choppy? – NiRR Dec 23 '13 at 13:58
  • 2) have you encoded the rest of the streams correctly? maybe your device doesn't support the other resolutions for example. – NiRR Dec 23 '13 at 13:59
  • Hi, how could i tell if the device supports other resolutions? i've used apple's transcoding recommendations for ios: [link] (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/technotes/tn2224/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40009745-CH1-ENCODEYOURVARIANTS). thanks! – user2928842 Dec 26 '13 at 08:10

1 Answers1

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I would start by force requesting a child manifest. For example, you might have the following ABR renditions available:

stream.m3u8
stream_600.m3u8
stream_800.m3u8
stream_1200.m3u8
stream_1600.m3u8

In the latest Safari (OSX and iOS) you can simply request the child manifests by changing your playback URL. You're probably requesting something like http://streamingserver.com/stream.m3u8 (master manifest) and you could just modify that to http://streamingserver.com/stream_1200.m3u8 (child manifest)

I would also try taking a look at the master manifest to ensure that the other bitrates are available. You can use a tool like wget or cURL to grab it from the master URL.

smp
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  • i can play each of the child manifests, and when i play the master manifest using VLC on my pc i get the higher bitrate. i guess the problem is in the transcoding of my contents, can't find the exact reason yet – user2928842 Dec 26 '13 at 08:07