WebVTT Subtitles/Captions in a HLS stream for iOS iPhone AVPlayer full screen configuration

Question

Hi All,

I have a quesiton around Subtitles and Captions using webVTT. I have no problem getting VTT to work with the Azure Media Player in the browser, but how do you get it to work via a hls stream to an iPhone that use AVPlayer in full screen. I assume it has to be present in the m3u8 manifest, but how do you do that dynamically?

James

Answer 1

Yes, we have an open issue tracking this and hope to have a fix in the future. We will update the thread when it is available.

Answer 2

Hi @James Lodge ,

You could "add "(format=m3u8-aapl)" path to the "/Manifest" portion of the URL to tell the streaming origin server to return back HLS content for consumption on Apple iOS native devices (for details, see locators and URLs)"

Please read this documentation for more details. Let us know if you have further questions

Answer 3

Hi James, there may be a regression on iOS 14 that is causing this issue.
Normally we recommend side-car loading the Web VTT file in the player. I believe on iOS this is supported in the AVPlayer, as well as in Safari using the HTML5 video tag.

But we have seen reports that on IOS 14 the side loaded captions file is not showing. Is that what you are currently seeing?
The team has filed a bug with Apple on this, as it was working previously in IOS13.

AMS does not currently support embedding the WebVTT into the HLS manifest directly (merging) from the side car file during dynamic packaging, and that may be what the iOS14 player is looking for. We are investigating.

Answer 4

Thanks for the reply guys. Let me test and come back to you.

Answer 5

Hi @John Deutscher (MSFT)

var myOptions = {
plugins: {
appInsights: {
//add additonal plugin options here
'debug': true
}},
};

var myPlayer = amp("azuremediaplayer", myOptions);
myPlayer.src([{ src: '//.....vnd.ms-sstr+xml" }] ,[{"src":"//......vtt","srclang": "en","label": "ENGLISH","kind": "captions"}]);

Right now all you get is

]1