Media stream recording only doesn't work on iPhone Safari. Do I have to consider something especially?

Question

I want to record video from smartphone cam by using the WebRTC and the script of github.io (demo: https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/getusermedia/record/). But the demo link just doesn't work on iPhone Safari.

I tried also the source script here

Here is the original code of the record demo:

'use strict';

/* globals MediaRecorder */

const mediaSource = new MediaSource();
mediaSource.addEventListener('sourceopen', handleSourceOpen, false);
let mediaRecorder;
let recordedBlobs;
let sourceBuffer;

const errorMsgElement = document.querySelector('span#errorMsg');
const recordedVideo = document.querySelector('video#recorded');
const recordButton = document.querySelector('button#record');
recordButton.addEventListener('click', () => {
  if (recordButton.textContent === 'Start Recording') {
    startRecording();
  } else {
    stopRecording();
    recordButton.textContent = 'Start Recording';
    playButton.disabled = false;
    downloadButton.disabled = false;
  }
});

const playButton = document.querySelector('button#play');
playButton.addEventListener('click', () => {
  const superBuffer = new Blob(recordedBlobs, {type: 'video/webm'});
  recordedVideo.src = null;
  recordedVideo.srcObject = null;
  recordedVideo.src = window.URL.createObjectURL(superBuffer);
  recordedVideo.controls = true;
  recordedVideo.play();
});

const downloadButton = document.querySelector('button#download');
downloadButton.addEventListener('click', () => {
  const blob = new Blob(recordedBlobs, {type: 'video/webm'});
  const url = window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
  const a = document.createElement('a');
  a.style.display = 'none';
  a.href = url;
  a.download = 'test.webm';
  document.body.appendChild(a);
  a.click();
  setTimeout(() => {
    document.body.removeChild(a);
    window.URL.revokeObjectURL(url);
  }, 100);
});

function handleSourceOpen(event) {
  console.log('MediaSource opened');
  sourceBuffer = mediaSource.addSourceBuffer('video/webm; codecs="vp8"');
  console.log('Source buffer: ', sourceBuffer);
}

function handleDataAvailable(event) {
  if (event.data && event.data.size > 0) {
    recordedBlobs.push(event.data);
  }
}

function startRecording() {
  recordedBlobs = [];
  let options = {mimeType: 'video/webm;codecs=vp9'};
  if (!MediaRecorder.isTypeSupported(options.mimeType)) {
    console.error(`${options.mimeType} is not Supported`);
    errorMsgElement.innerHTML = `${options.mimeType} is not Supported`;
    options = {mimeType: 'video/webm;codecs=vp8'};
    if (!MediaRecorder.isTypeSupported(options.mimeType)) {
      console.error(`${options.mimeType} is not Supported`);
      errorMsgElement.innerHTML = `${options.mimeType} is not Supported`;
      options = {mimeType: 'video/webm'};
      if (!MediaRecorder.isTypeSupported(options.mimeType)) {
        console.error(`${options.mimeType} is not Supported`);
        errorMsgElement.innerHTML = `${options.mimeType} is not Supported`;
        options = {mimeType: ''};
      }
    }
  }

  try {
    mediaRecorder = new MediaRecorder(window.stream, options);
  } catch (e) {
    console.error('Exception while creating MediaRecorder:', e);
    errorMsgElement.innerHTML = `Exception while creating MediaRecorder: ${JSON.stringify(e)}`;
    return;
  }

  console.log('Created MediaRecorder', mediaRecorder, 'with options', options);
  recordButton.textContent = 'Stop Recording';
  playButton.disabled = true;
  downloadButton.disabled = true;
  mediaRecorder.onstop = (event) => {
    console.log('Recorder stopped: ', event);
  };
  mediaRecorder.ondataavailable = handleDataAvailable;
  mediaRecorder.start(10); // collect 10ms of data
  console.log('MediaRecorder started', mediaRecorder);
}

function stopRecording() {
  mediaRecorder.stop();
  console.log('Recorded Blobs: ', recordedBlobs);
}

function handleSuccess(stream) {
  recordButton.disabled = false;
  console.log('getUserMedia() got stream:', stream);
  window.stream = stream;

  const gumVideo = document.querySelector('video#gum');
  gumVideo.srcObject = stream;
}

async function init(constraints) {
  try {
    const stream = await navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(constraints);
    handleSuccess(stream);
  } catch (e) {
    console.error('navigator.getUserMedia error:', e);
    errorMsgElement.innerHTML = `navigator.getUserMedia error:${e.toString()}`;
  }
}

document.querySelector('button#start').addEventListener('click', async () => {
  const hasEchoCancellation = document.querySelector('#echoCancellation').checked;
  const constraints = {
    audio: {
      echoCancellation: {exact: hasEchoCancellation}
    },
    video: {
      width: 1280, height: 720
    }
  };
  console.log('Using media constraints:', constraints);
  await init(constraints);
});

I also tested the script in fiddle on different smartphones. It only doesn't work on the iPhone apparently.

Answer 1

Check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM WebM video working on safari too.

There are 2 ways -

Solution #1 (NOT GUARANTEED) :

• Try with VP8 codec like so: new Blob(recordedBlobs, {'video/webm;codecs=vp8'});

Solution #2 (GUARANTEED) :

• Record with video/webm;codecs=h264, as MP4 and Webm supports h264 codec.

  check for available containers here -> video_codec_and_container

• Now you just need to change the video container from WEBM to MP4. Which is way easy using tool such as ffmpeg - Note: copy the video codec, so that re-encoding will be avoided

  ffmpeg -i INPUT.webm -codec:v copy OUTPUT.mp4
  

Recommendation: Convert videos to MP4 because WEBM has support for limited browsers.