Record HTTP Live Streaming Video To File While Watching?

Question

I am trying to create a streaming video DVR like functionality in an app I am developing. I have an HTTP Live Stream that I have successfully gotten to play on the iPad. I want the user to be able to push the "Record" button, and begin recording the video that is currently playing from that point. This video file will be accessible from the app or from the camera roll. Currently, I am using the MPMoviePlayerController object to play the video stream. I do not see any methods of accessing the data from the object in Apple's documentation. Here are some thoughts I had on ways of going about this.

1) Somehow access the video data from MPMoviePlayerController, and write this to a file. Or use another type of player object that will allow me to play the video and access the currently playing data.

2) Implement some sort of screen capture recording that gets a video capture of the iPad's screen. This would allow me to record the video in a "screenshot" sort of way.

3) Locate the HTTP Live Streaming video segments where they are stored by MPMoviePlayerController. Presumably they need to be stored somewhere on the iPad for playback. Is there a way of accessing these files?

4) Manually download the stream video segments over http while streaming the file. This seems like its not ideal since the stream would have to be downloaded twice.

5) This could work. Periodically download the video segments to the iPhone. Set up a local http server on the iPhone and server the videos to the MPMoviePlayerController. This way the video segments could be marked for recording and assembled into a video.

6) I do have control of the streaming server. I could write some server side code to record the video on the server end, then send the video to the iPad after the fact. I would rather not do this.

Has anyone done any of these things? Ideally the iPhone would just be able to access the video data somehow and easily record it. I would rather not get into options 4, 5, or 6 (above) if I don't have to.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

DVR on the device is somewhat not encouraged, due to the limited space available and other factors like battery life, processing power, cleanup procedures after the user stops the dvr, etc.

If you want to achieve DVR playback on iOS devices (or other devices using HLS), I suggest you keep the video server side. The live stream is already captured and segmented server side, all you would have to do is keep the segments a bit longer, instead of deleting them. By using the EXT-X-PLAYLIST-TYPE and EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE tags, you can suggest to the player that he's opening a live stream which has DVR (earlier) video available.

Alternatively, you can use a server that does that out of the box, for example Wowza. Here's an article on how to achieve this with Wowza