MPEG-DASH cross-browser play

Question

I want to stream some video file and i've found interesting the DASH adaptive streaming capabilities, but i'cant find anything else but "dash.js" (which seems to work only for Chrome browsers) to implement client-side playback (integrated with html5 "video" tag). I know that dash.js works with chrome's mediasource APIs, but -if i'm not wrong- they should be standardized by W3C. Firefox says that MSE APIs are already avaliable on the recent versions, but dashif.org example video doesn't work, while an alert says that i should retry with chrome. So, what can a poor student at first experience with web development do to adaptive-stream video with html5???

Answer 1

Indeed, Firefox supports the standardized Media Source Extensions, but you also need to confirm that the content you are trying to play is supported in terms of video and audio codecs.

You can find the supported codecs for Firefox here. So, the key for cross-browser compatibility is to use the audio and video codecs supported by all browsers.

Also, there is a much newer version of the DASH.js player currently available, perhaps you want to give it a try: DASH.js 1.1.2

Answer 2

You can test the MSE implementation of Firefox already with the developer version of Firefox 36/37. Please not that you have to enable it via about:config. Currently it is planned to release it in version 37, to the best of my knowledge. Also the nightly build allows MSE testing.

According to your player request, I can recommend the player from www.dash-player.com. I tested it already on IE 11 (Win 8), Safari 8, Firefox 36 and Chrome (Windows, Linux, Android) of course. They have also an automatic fallback solution using Flash. And, perfectly for students - it's free.