Traffic Cameras of ".m3u8" file type - Anyone embedded?
I would like to display the South Carolina DOT traffic Camera live video feed - preferably in the MapTip dialog or Short Description.
I have camera locations and the urls for the streaming videos but am running into walls using the videos. Especially on the desktop.
Sample urls to try:
rtmpurl: (http://rtmp://8.15.251.56:1935/rtplive/40033) rtmp://8.15.251.56:1935/rtplive/40033
httpurl: http://8.15.251.56:1935/rtplive/40033/playlist.m3u8
The above file type I cannot get to play on desktop with anything (even outside GE/HTML 2.6.1). I CAN get the httpurl to open a new tab using a "link" within the short description but it only works on iPADS and some Android tablets. I cannot get it to play within the map tip or results panel.
Has anyone had any luck with this file type?
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Hi Carmen! The protocol for streaming media via .m3u8 is HTTP Live Streaming, or HLS. It looks like browser support for it is pretty hit-and-miss outside of iOS/OS X, Windows 12 using Microsoft Edge, and Chrome on Android (so: Android 4.0 and higher): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming#Clients
On my Windows 8 machine, I can play your sample URL in Chrome or IE via https://www.hlsplayer.net/ but not in Firefox. I can also open it in iTunes by opening a stream (CTRL + U) and entering this address: (http://itls://8.15.251.56:1935/rtplive/40033/playlist.m3u8) itls://8.15.251.56:1935/rtplive/40033/playlist.m3u8
Until this protocol is more widely supported across browsers, you may have to document a workaround for users who aren't using a compatible browser.
Hope that helps!0 -
Thank you Jordan for your reply. I was coming to a similar conclusion but you provided additional helpful information. I should eventually have access to a Wowza server/app that may solve some problems. Also, there would mostly be a limited number of devices (laptops and tablets) needing access so if we have to to the "workarounds" for some laptops at least there won't be that many.
Thanks,
Carmen0 -
Happy to help!
I did some further reading, and it appears that I was overly optimistic about desktop browsers being able to support this in future. The (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=577084) Mozilla and (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=54198) Chromium open-source projects appear to be a firm "no" in favor of Dynamic Adaptive Stream over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) and, while Edge does support HLS, (https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/07/02/moving-to-html5-premium-media/) Microsoft is also recommending DASH . Apple, who was the major driver behind HLS, (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#software-requirements) continues to require that any app that streams video longer than 10 minutes must use HLS , so it's not clear if or when they'll get behind DASH as well.
Of course, this doesn't help you unless you have some say in how SC DOT hosts their media. I guess if there's a take-away from this, it's that it may be some time before everyone agrees on a streaming video standard. Which, sadly, seems pretty standard.
...y'know, for standards.0
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