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How to stream video over HTTP for mobile devices? HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)

· One min read

Motivation

Video service over Http Live Streaming for mobile devices, which...

  1. ==has limited memory/storage==
  2. suffers from the unstable network connection and variable bandwidth, and needs ==midstream quality adjustments.==

Solution

  1. Server-side: In a typical configuration, a hardware encoder takes audio-video input, encodes it as H.264 video and AAC audio, and outputs it in an MPEG-2 Transport Stream

    1. the stream is then broken into a series of short media files (.ts possibly 10s) by a software stream segmenter.
    2. The segmenter also creates and maintains an index(.m3u8) file containing a list of the media files.
    3. Both the media fils and the index files are published on the web server.
  2. Client-side: client reads the index, then requests the listed media files in order and displays them without any pauses or gaps between segments.

Architecture

HLS Architecture

References: