Hi there,
We would like to playback multiple files as one playlist (with total duration) on iOS devices. We call this a sequential playlist. According to the HLS spec (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-08) the way to do this is by separating different TS files with the EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY tag. We tested this with manually generated TS files and playlists and it works fine: the different video’s are seamless stitched together and the standard media player on iOS shows the duration of the combined files.
Our next step was to implement this for Wowza. The idea is to requests the m3u8’s file for the different files that need to be ‘stitched’. This ‘script server’ parses the different playlists, extracts the links of the TS files (including sesssionid’s) and references all the TS files (with absolute url) in one m3u8 file (separated by the EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY tag).
The problem is that a server-side script on the script server is actually requesting the files from Wowza. I am afraid that the session is with the script server instead of with the user. The other problem I see is the expiration of a session. The third file (in a playlist with total 3 videos) is logically played some time (up to 1 or 2 hour later) after the first file. The session could be closed by then.
My questions:
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Is there a solution for this sequential playlist feature that is supported by Wowza?
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Is it possible for a random client to reuse the sessionid that is given to the server when server-side parsing the different playlists?
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If the script server uses (for example) CURL to change the headers (incl. adding user ip) of the m3u8 request to Wowza, would the user later be able to reuse the session? Or is something else binding the session to the user?
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Another solution that we thought of is requesting the m3u8 files with javascript, parse them locally and feed the local generated playlist to the iOS mediaplayer. Do you think that this is theoretically possible?
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I’ve read that there are differences between Wowza 2 and 3.11 with regards to reusing closed sessions. Does this apply to this situation and what would be the limitations of Wowza 2?
Any help would be appreciated.
Best,
Bauke