Native iOS video player fails on HLS encrypted with openssl

Question

I'm having an issue with encrypting HLS using openssl. As described here: Using openssl encryption for Apple's HTTP Live Streaming I'm using following script to encrypt TS files created by ffmpeg:

encyptionKeyFile="crypt.key"
openssl rand 16 > $encyptionKeyFile
encryptionKey=`cat $encyptionKeyFile | hexdump -e '16/1 "%02x"'`

splitFilePrefix="$fileName.split."
encryptedSplitFilePrefix="${splitFilePrefix}enc."

numberOfTsFiles=`ls ${splitFilePrefix}*.ts | wc -l`

for i in {0..$numberOfTsFiles}; do
    initializationVector=`printf '%032x' $i`
    openssl aes-128-cbc -e -in ${splitFilePrefix}$i.ts -out ${encryptedSplitFilePrefix}$i.ts -nosalt -iv $initializationVector -K $encryptionKey
    rm ${splitFilePrefix}$i.ts
done

ffmpeg command used to generate TS file is following:

ffmpeg -i $file -codec copy -map 0 -f segment -vbsf h264_mp4toannexb -segment_list $mainPlaylistName -segment_time 10 ${splitFilePrefix}%d.ts

M3U8 playlist file looks like:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:0
#EXT-X-ALLOW-CACHE:YES
#EXT-X-KEY:METHOD=AES-128,URI=crypt.key
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:19
#EXTINF:11.875000,
BigBuckBunnyMovie.split.enc.0.ts
#EXTINF:11.166667,
BigBuckBunnyMovie.split.enc.1.ts
#EXTINF:12.500000,
BigBuckBunnyMovie.split.enc.2.ts
#EXTINF:12.166667,
BigBuckBunnyMovie.split.enc.3.ts
#EXTINF:8.375000,
...
#EXT-X-ENDLIST

I thought that it might be a problem with encoding or something with ffmpeg command format but the thing is that encrypted stream doesn't work on native iOS player (MPMoviePlayerController) but works fine on VLC. What is more, unencrypted stream (using TS files produced by ffmpeg) works on both native player and VLC!

Can you suggest me what can I do to be able to play it on native iOS video player?

Thanks for all your responses!

Answer 1

The draft spec states that the URI value is a quoted string. See section 3.4.4 of the draft spec.