Note: User story references (e.g., us18) refer to our user stories document.
VoV video player needs to satisfy these requirements:
Features that are required and nice to have built-in but we can write them ourselves
Features that are not required but would be nice to have and difficult for us to implement
Features that we will most likely want to write ourselves
Other requirements
The list below only compares open-source players with license less strict than GPL.
jwplayer | mediaelement.js | OSMF (StrobeMedia) | Engage | video.js | Fluid player | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
License | Custom | GPLv2/MIT | BSD | MPL | LGPLv3 | ECL 2.0 |
Flash | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
m3u8 | Flash + HTML5 | HTML5 | 3rd party plugin | Probably | Unclear | HTML5 |
Adaptive streaming | Yes | No | Yes | Probably | No | No |
Playlist | Yes | No | Yes | Probably | No | No |
Skinnable | Flash + HTML5 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | HTML5 |
Javascript API | Yes | Yes | Exploratory | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Clip making | Yes | No | Unclear | Yes | Unclear | No |
Caption | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Engage is based on OSMF. We're looking into Fluid Player.
Is documented at https://wiki.dlib.indiana.edu/display/VarVideo/Matterhorn+Engage+Player
There is a fallback from Flash to HTML5, but does not have an option to specify source (RTMP or mp4) for each type of player.
Engage seems to be not flexible and too tightly coupled to Matterhorn. Getting help isn't easy.
FluidPlayer looks good, has some flexibility, but they're not interested in Flash video. Fullscreen API isn't supported in IE but is useful. We could probably fall back to Flash fullscreen. For now we'll try to make FluidPlayer work with some flash player.
RTMP streaming seems to be unavoidable, as some security barrier has to be there to discourage piracy (though impossible to prevent)