Writing an app to stream video to iPhone

Question

I'm interested in creating an iPhone app that can stream video from a central server, YouTube style. I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to do this before, what is the path of least resistant, existing APIs, etc? I really know nothing about how this is generally done. Would I be working with sockets? Just looking for some direction here. Thanks!

Solution 1

If you have the streaming server up and ready, it is quite easy to implement a video controller that pops up youtube-style.

NSString *videoURLString = @"http://path-to-iphone-compliant-video-stream";
NSURL *videoURL = [NSURL URLWithString:videoURLString];
MPMoviePlayerController moviePlayer = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:videoURL]; 
[moviePlayer prepareToPlay]; 
[moviePlayer play];
[self.view addSubview:moviePlayer.view];

You need to handle the controller that display the video player's view (which is self in this case).

In iOS 3.2+ MPMoviePlayerViewController make it even easier:

NSString *videoURLString = @"http://path-to-iphone-compliant-video-stream";
NSURL *videoURL = [NSURL URLWithString:videoURLString];
MPMoviePlayerViewController *moviePlayerView = [[[MPMoviePlayerViewController alloc] initWithContentURL:videoURL] autorelease];
[self presentMoviePlayerViewControllerAnimated:moviePlayerView];

presentMoviePlayerViewControllerAnimated is a MediaPlayer's additional method to FWViewController that you will find in iOS 3.2+ and it takes care of creating a view controller and pushing it on the stack, animating it with a slide-from-bottom animation, as in youtube.app.

Solution 2

Apple has a detailed article about setting up server side for media streaming:

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StreamingMediaGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

and Best Practices Note:

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/technotes/tn2224/_index.html

Not only it contains info about streaming service architecture and tools used to build it but also has some requirements to such kind of service that must be fulfilled and references to live test streams.

Solution 3

Use this code to use low memory. On streaming video....

-(IBAction)playMovie:(NSURL *) theURL 
{
    NSURL    *fileURL    =   theURL;
    MPMoviePlayerController *moviePlayerController = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:fileURL];

    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
                                             selector:@selector(moviePlaybackComplete:)
                                                 name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification
                                               object:moviePlayerController];

    [self.view addSubview:moviePlayerController.view];
    moviePlayerController.useApplicationAudioSession = NO;
    moviePlayerController.fullscreen = YES;
    [moviePlayerController play];
}

- (void)moviePlaybackComplete:(NSNotification *)notification
{
    MPMoviePlayerController *moviePlayerController = [notification object];
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self
                                                    name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification
                                                  object:moviePlayerController];

    [moviePlayerController.view removeFromSuperview];
    [moviePlayerController release];
}

Solution 4

QuickTime videos already stream to the phone. The path of least resistance would be to use the media player controller and point it to a streaming media file on a streaming server.

Solution 5

While the existing answers are good, if you need to use non HTTP streams (mms or rtmp for example) or non Apple supported audio / video codecs, things get a bit more complicated.

I'm not an expert myself, but I've been using this VideoStreaming SDK to solve those problems, and it makes customizing the client much easier (background streaming, pausing streams, etc). Might be worth a look if you have those requirements as well.

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