Play an HLS audio only stream on IOS and Android but keep audio controls

Question

Here the short of it. I'm using an HLS stream with JWPlayer6 for an iOS/Android app I am working on. JWPlayer http://www.longtailvideo.com/ works well and fallbacks to other streaming and player types gracefully. The problem is this, when I want to securely play back audio only in iOS the player is just a condensed black rectangle with a play icon in the middle if I click on the audio it plays fine but it launches the file in quicktime window, and the quicktime player window completely covers the app so you can't listen to the file and continue to use the app.

Is there any possible way to play an audio only stream that utilizes an actually embed-able player instead of the default mechanism of launching audio media types on iOS and Android.

I have already used JPlayer to achieve the functionality I want by placing the js/css player at the bottom of the app in a fixed position so that you can still browse the app while the file is being played, but this is only demo solution for my boss to show him how it would work, but in the end we will need a solution that can securely stream the audio with a player that lets you keep the controls in-app on the page rather than launching quicktime which even after playing the file does not return you to the apps other views.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

This is the expected behavior on iOS, default controls take over. — emaxsaun, Jan 04 '13 at 22:48
Not necessarily you can use jsplayer like i did, as the embedded player with in the app to control an audio stream but jsplayer doesn't work with HLS streaming...I know I am not the only only one to bring this up...there just has to be a way. — greaterKing, Jan 04 '13 at 23:02
We fail back to the native controls. In a future release of 6X we will use our own controls instead of doing this, though, but for now, it is not possible. — emaxsaun, Jan 04 '13 at 23:06
Appreciate the quick response Ethan I have to say that each time I have communicated with you wether on longtail or now here, that your response time is amazing. Any way glad to here that JW6+ will have that. Any ETA?... Month(s) away...? — greaterKing, Jan 04 '13 at 23:39
Np. I am not sure when specifically it will released, but I know it is coming. Not sure which 6.X release it will be, though. — emaxsaun, Jan 06 '13 at 00:16
Has this changed at all?? I noticed that you guys were on 6.1? — greaterKing, Feb 03 '13 at 08:22
We are on 6.1, 6.2 is coming out soon, but we are still using the native controls on these devices, so this has not changed yet. — emaxsaun, Feb 04 '13 at 03:57
sigh...There are a lot of players jplayer, audio.js,etc...but none of them can stream audio securely while preventing the iOS ui from taking over the app with quick time. Guess I have to write some C+ :{ — greaterKing, Feb 08 '13 at 06:18
I personally think that Apple is actually enforcing this with their native controls...they put a lot of restrictions on what can be done in html5 — emaxsaun, Feb 08 '13 at 20:33
Yes but for the sake of argument, I think allowing hls through the video tag only seems a bit silly, since hls is not a medida format but a type of streaming. Wouldn't it be strange if https urls only worked on tags and couldn't be used on tags? Obviously this is an html5 thing and not a JW thing. The JWPlayer is amazing, and I have been able to implement it well, even in a phonegapped app on iOS and Android...no complaints, but hopefully a solution will present it self, I may be a fringe case but I know I'm not the only one. btw play-inline = true, would be a great addition to JW:} — greaterKing, Mar 08 '13 at 05:53
Yes, we are planning on actually moving over to our own native controls in a future JW6 release for these devices. — emaxsaun, Mar 08 '13 at 17:06
This is great! Can't wait to implement that. I like the way you can shrink the jwplayer for audio only when its used in the browser, but supporting that same ability on the mobile phones would be great that way people could still browse a page or navigate through the app. — greaterKing, Mar 10 '13 at 00:44
Eagerly watching [JWPlayer6 Roadmap](http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/query?milestone=Backlog&group=status&page=1&order=component) I don't hope to see inline option for mobile audio playback or something like that. :} — greaterKing, Mar 17 '13 at 04:44
ended up using jplayer(jplayer.org)...not sure why jw can't switch to the — greaterKing, May 30 '13 at 09:10
I already emailed support. I see the inline player in iOS but it still opens the audio and plays it in fullscreen mode rather than just letting the jwplayer handle the control...there really isn't that much of a difference regarding this issue in 6.6. What we were patiently hoping for was this: Instead of passing the medias url to iOS "if" audio allow the player to handle the media just like jplayer does via html5's audio class ..etc — greaterKing, Oct 05 '13 at 01:07
Yes, we still will play back via a native fullscreen player if the device is an iPhone. If it is an iPad, it plays back inline. — emaxsaun, Oct 05 '13 at 20:40
Just so no one else waste time trying to figure this out. If you are like me building a mobile application using a framework like phonegap then in my opinion when it comes to audio then you should use a solution like jPlayer(javascript media player) not JWPlayer...audio controls on the iPhone and other device is too inconstant for now. I've had huge success with jplayer. From one dev to another :}...btw JWPlayer is awesome too...but you're a dev with a 1 year old issue you don't like wasting time :} — greaterKing, Mar 25 '14 at 20:19
We have been getting more requests for audio inline, so we are looking into adding this, too. — emaxsaun, Mar 25 '14 at 22:48
Thanks Ethan for the update I'll look at the jwplayer road map soon. — greaterKing, Mar 26 '14 at 01:43

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

Lol...anyway finally figured out a solution that works for me in my particular case. Since the html side of things for our application resides in a webview on iOS, thanks to phonegap, I was able to do the following.

HTML5 inline video on iPhone vs iPad/Browser

and now the player finally plays inline just like the iPad. I tested this and it works flawlessly. I also tested it without added the obj-c flag in the app code and it does not work. This means the solution I've provided only works if you are packaging you application using html and obj-c like with phonegap or Titanium etc. This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Now I can use all of jw's awesomeness and still play nice with iOS and give a great user experience to all of our members...thanks for you time and patience. As a side note the inline audio only player even works flawlessly with Android to write of of the box not java code needed to edit anything. Surprised me because I know how HLS is not really all that well supported yet on the Androids.

Android Jelly Bean still has problems. You can't seek the audio. — greaterKing, Jul 16 '14 at 06:14
solved my on issue...again...:) by http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35122171/starting-vitamio-in-a-service-from-cordova-plugin — greaterKing, Mar 29 '16 at 18:47

Play an HLS audio only stream on IOS and Android but keep audio controls

1 Answers1