Stream videos using Firebase in Android

Question

I already found a similar question here but that was asked almost 2 years ago. Currently, I am working on a video streaming app for Android and I was thinking if using Firebase to host the videos is a viable option.

I tried using the URL of the video stored in Firebase storage to play the video in my app and it is working just fine.

But I searched online and found that everybody is advising not to use Firebase for the same. Is there any particular reason why Firebase shouldn't be used for this purpose?

P.S. In my case, all the videos that need to be streamed will be in HD and will have a longer time duration.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Firebase Storage does not place restrictions on the type of files you can upload to it. So you can upload video files with no problem. However, if you are expecting to be able to stream the video out in different formats for different types of clients, you might be disappointed. You should think of Firebase Storage mostly as a general file storage solution, not a video streaming solution.

And Also with consideration of the firebase usage costings, you probably will have to pay a lot of money as your userbase grows.

read here and here

Answer 2

In order to stream videos it's better to use some streaming protocol like DASH of HLS, as it will load the next video chunk adaptively according to network speed etc.

If you have any thoughts of supporting iOS as well, you'd want to choose HLS which is supported on Android and iOS.

There's a way to host HLS videos for streaming on Firebase Cloud Storage, as I wrote in this answer: Firebase Storage Video Streaming