

What streaming protocols do browsers support for WebM - ucee054

Dear HN,<p>Any ideas on what protocols browsers support for streaming &#60;video&#62;?<p>I have seen only video tags of the form
&#60;video src=http://server/video.webm&#62;
which implies to me http running over tcp, which suffers from backoff and retransmit in response to packet drop<p>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<p>Also setting up a streaming server and trying to connect by each browser has not proved straightforward.<p>For what it's worth, my results are that streaming protocols never work with the &#60;video&#62; tag. I am asking the community in case I am mistaken<p>Many Thanks
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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://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/626/smooth-streaming-technical-
overview/)
[http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/201...](http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2011/07/comparison-
of-approaches-to-adaptive-http-streaming-.html)

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.)

~~~
ucee054
Many Thanks

