question

JamesLodge-0307 avatar image
3 Votes"
JamesLodge-0307 asked KaiMaschke-0188 published

WebVTT Subtitles/Captions in a HLS stream for iOS iPhone AVPlayer full screen configuration

Hi All,

I have a quesiton around Subtitles and Captions using webVTT. I have no problem getting VTT to work with the Azure Media Player in the browser, but how do you get it to work via a hls stream to an iPhone that use AVPlayer in full screen. I assume it has to be present in the m3u8 manifest, but how do you do that dynamically?

James

azure-media-services
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Hello @JamesLodge-0307,

Just checking to see if the below responses help to answer your question.

Thanks,
-Grace

0 Votes 0 ·
Grmacjon-MSFT avatar image
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Grmacjon-MSFT answered JamesLodge-0307 commented

Hi @JamesLodge-0307,

You could "add "(format=m3u8-aapl)" path to the "/Manifest" portion of the URL to tell the streaming origin server to return back HLS content for consumption on Apple iOS native devices (for details, see locators and URLs)"

Please read this documentation for more details. Let us know if you have further questions


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Thanks but I don't think this will resolve the issue with the captions in AVPlayer.

From my understanding there need to be a header in the manifest regarding captions like EXT-X-MEDIA, TYPE=CLOSED-CAPTIONS






0 Votes 0 ·
JohndeuMSFT avatar image
0 Votes"
JohndeuMSFT answered LodgeUK-1655 commented

Hi James, there may be a regression on iOS 14 that is causing this issue.
Normally we recommend side-car loading the Web VTT file in the player. I believe on iOS this is supported in the AVPlayer, as well as in Safari using the HTML5 video tag.

But we have seen reports that on IOS 14 the side loaded captions file is not showing. Is that what you are currently seeing?
The team has filed a bug with Apple on this, as it was working previously in IOS13.

AMS does not currently support embedding the WebVTT into the HLS manifest directly (merging) from the side car file during dynamic packaging, and that may be what the iOS14 player is looking for. We are investigating.

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Thanks @JohndeuMSFT

I believe AVPlayer is expecting a header in the form of EXT-X-MEDIA TYPE=CLOSED-CAPTIONS.

I assume this isn't suppored?

1 Vote 1 ·

No, it is not currently supported that we would decorate the manifest for a VTT file that is sitting in the Asset in that way. If that is a requirement now I can have the team review this and see what we can do in the future.

2 Votes 2 ·

@JohndeuMSFT yes please. There must be more people than me that would like to see subs/Captions on iOS where AVPlayer is used.

Not only is this functionality needed but also required to avoid the issue I raise below whereby you get “Unknown CC” as per _index.html


1 Vote 1 ·
JamesLodge-0307 avatar image
0 Votes"
JamesLodge-0307 answered

Thanks for the reply guys. Let me test and come back to you.

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JamesLodge-0307 avatar image
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JamesLodge-0307 answered JamesLodge-0307 edited

Hi @JohndeuMSFT

var myOptions = {
plugins: {
appInsights: {
//add additonal plugin options here
'debug': true
}},
};

var myPlayer = amp("azuremediaplayer", myOptions);
myPlayer.src([{ src: '//.....vnd.ms-sstr+xml" }] ,[{"src":"//......vtt","srclang": "en","label": "ENGLISH","kind": "captions"}]);

Right now all you get is

![73818-image.png][1]



image.png (74.9 KiB)
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LodgeUK-1655 avatar image
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LodgeUK-1655 answered

@JohndeuMSFT Is Microsoft looking at this? For accessibility it would be advantageous to be able to support CC on AVPlayer

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JohndeuMSFT avatar image
2 Votes"
JohndeuMSFT answered KaiMaschke-0188 published

Yes, we have an open issue tracking this and hope to have a fix in the future. We will update the thread when it is available.

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Is the open issue public in any way that we could track it directly?

2 Votes 2 ·

Any news on this request?

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