Scale Engine video hosting and SMIL

Hi Chan,

I had a look at what you provided as the video URL. It’s actually some SMIL file for jwPlayer.

Opening that file in a text editor reveals the stream details which you need to enter into our plugin:

RTMP Server: rtmp://example.videocdn.scaleengine.net/example-vod/play
RTMP Path: sestore1/example/5-4-14_432.mp4

So then it looks like:

[fvplayer rtmp="rtmp://example.videocdn.scaleengine.net/example-vod/play" rtmp_path="sestore1/example/5-4-14_432.mp4"]

If you have your HLS M3U8 too, just add it into it as the video source. It will result in something like:

[fvplayer src="http://example.videocdn.scaleengine.net/....m3u8" rtmp="rtmp://example.videocdn.scaleengine.net/example-vod/play" rtmp_path="sestore1/example/5-4-14_432.mp4"]

Making the web work for you,

Martin

Hi Chan,

1) yes, multibirtate is something we want to support. Currently our FV Player Pro does support this, but it’s not working on the fly – you select your quality, that reloads the page and you get your desired video quality. Notice that your streams have a _432 or _720 postfix in file names:

sestore1/example/5-4-14_720.mp4
sestore1/example/5-4-14_432.mp4

If that’s the case with all of your videos, then our technology would work perfectly here. We just need to improve it to work on the fly – like for example Youtube quality switching.

2) Your video plays for me. What exact problem are you having?

A couple of notes though:

2.1) No need to include a separate mobile version for HLS M3U8 as HLS handles quality switching internally. However the one which you have is only single quality. Ask Scaleengine how to get the multiple quality HLS stream. Until you figure this out, it’s better to include a lower quality stream, just to make sure it plays well on mobile iDevices. 1280p video might be too much for older iPhone or iPad.

Also, the mobile video applies to any mobile device and not every mobile device plays HLS (only iDevices actually). It’s best to use MP4 for mobile video.

2.2) I would recommend that you use the lower quality RTMP stream by default, just to make sure it plays well on older computers.

Thanks,
Martin

Hello Chan,

yes, it’s an MP4 video, but it’s a huge difference if you serve it via RTMP or HTTP.

It’s a problem with Scale Engine as well, as they don’t provide MP4 video over HTTP. So if you are not on a so called iDevice (required for HLS) and you don’t have Flash installed (required for RTMP), you can’t play the video.

If you are on an old mobile, you can play RTSP (we plan to add support for it), but it still leaves a hole in making sure everybody can play the video.

It’s still a good service as most people with such computers have Flash already because of Youtube, but I wonder what is the Scale Engine’s view on this.

Thanks,
Martin

Hi Chan,

We recommend Vimeo Pro hosting at $200/year for unlimited videos. Our FV Player now wraps Vimeo Pro perfectly with no Vimeo chrome.

Making the web work for you, Alec

Just a couple of notes.
Scaleengine provides RTSP delivery. Link is available in our embed generator.
Scaleengine provides HTTP delivery on the order of 10 billion hits a month, but that is different than video streaming.

Hello Stefan,

it’s great that you provide RTSP. Could you please provide a sample with the MP4 file delivered over HTTP?

Hello Chan,

do you mean that the playback is not continuous, but it plays fine for a second, then stops for a fraction of second and then plays again until it stops to buffer again?

Perhaps increasing the buffer size would help. We can add such option in the next version, which should be out tomorrow.

You can try to use the lower quality stream for now, that one should be less likely to cause buffering issues.

Thanks,
Martin

Hello Stefan,

what about the MP4 file over HTTP protocol? You mentioned something about “Scaleengine provides HTTP delivery on the order of 10 billion hits”, but I’m not sure if I understand that correctly. Is this available on standard user accounts?

Thanks,
Martin