m4v video and RTMP servers in RSS feed enclosures

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m4v video and RTMP servers in RSS feed enclosures

I've been playing with iTunes U and RSS for most of the past two days, without much success. All my videos are m4v encoded and I serve them via rtmp:// (or rtmpt://), however "rtmp://" is not a valid entry in an RSS 2.0 enclosure - so I can't get iTunes to accept my RSS feed.

Does anyone have any tips or ideas on how I can tell iTunes to serve the video files from my rtmp server?

I've tried almost every variation I can think of, including using HTTP redirection scripts, but when I use those in place of actual video in the enclosure (even though the redirect sets the video/x-m4v header and redirects to the correct rtmp url), iTunes rejects the RSS feed (with an 'iTunes store is temporarily unavailable' error!)

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Posted on Jan 8, 2009 9:52 AM

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Answer 1

EB

Level 1

35 points

Jan 8, 2009 12:43 PM in response to tom-ttv

Have you tried http://feedvalidator.org/ ? Does it report that you have a valid feed?

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Answer 2

richwolf

Level 3

725 points

Jan 8, 2009 1:52 PM in response to tom-ttv

Tom,

A couple of things ...

First is -- as you correctly point out -- you cannot legally use an rtmp:// URL scheme within an RSS enclosure:

http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification#hrelementsOfLtitemgt

Though I cannot say with absolute certainty, I am willing to buy Duncan lunch if Apple isn't validating RSS feed XML. So it is extremely unlikely you're going to slip one past Apple. 🙂 🙂

Next thing is, lessay you've got a legitimate RSS server doling out Flash files (that is, a server that feeds in the normal way). Further, lessay you craft your enclosure to specify the correct MIME type for Flash:

application/x-shockwave-flash

You'd then have an enclosure that looked something like this:

<enclosure url="http://www.myflashserver.edu/flash-videos/MyMovie.swf" length="12216320" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" />

Okay, so the problem now is that you won't be able to get iTunes to respect the enclosure because iTunes has no Flash plugin ... Flash is not a supported media type in iTunes. 🙂

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Answer 3

tom-ttv Author

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Jan 9, 2009 2:00 AM in response to EB

Yes and no. It reports a valid RSS file if I change the rtmp:// to http:// - which sort of defeats the purpose. I can happily craft a valid RSS feed though that grabs the video.

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Answer 4

tom-ttv Author

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Jan 9, 2009 2:12 AM in response to richwolf

Well, the plot thickens. After giving up on the rtmp:// route (the rtmp server quite happily streams mp4 files as well as flash-encoded files - remember, I am trying to deliver iPod/iPhone x-m4v (and yes, the files have been tested on both devices)), I switched the m4v to being delivered through a Quicktime streaming server over http.

But now iTunes will happily validate the feed and the enclosures, but will absolutely refuse to stream the video, even though it's encoded for streaming, and is sitting behind a Quicktime stream server - iTunes downloads the file before playing.

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Answer 5

richwolf

Level 3

725 points

Jan 9, 2009 1:00 PM in response to tom-ttv

Right, but that's the way iTunes works. 🙂 When you try to force the iTunes app to deal with streams, you are defeating what makes iTunes U great ... that is, the synergy that exists between the iTunes Store, the iTunes application, and iPods/iPhones. The whole point of iTunes is that content delivery is asynchronous ... that is, content can be accessed anywhere/anytime, network or not. The primary delivery system is not the networked computer, it's the iPod. When you try to use iTunes as a streaming client, you're forcing an end-user to have a networked computer.

Don't misunderstand ... I do not imply that iPods are superior to streams ... only that they're different things. RSS/podcasting and streams don't go well together in the same way that peanut butter and vinegar don't go well together. I mean, you can force them to go together, but the result might not be that great. When I talk to my iTunes U admin peers, I often find that streaming holds a special place in many hearts. I suspect the reasons have mostly to do with a sense of control or copyright fears. When it comes to control, that is long since gone (any minimally determined person can capture and redistribute a stream) ... and when it comes to copyright, my experts tell me (because God knows I'm not expert on copyright) that copyright is mostly about intent ... that, in most cases, if you have people agree, up-front, to respect copyright ... and then you say what is covered under copyright, that it goes a long way to keeping you free of legal trouble. I notice this is exactly what Apple does ... they post a message before each Steve Jobs keynote saying the keynote is copyrighted material.

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Answer 6

tom-ttv Author

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Jan 13, 2009 4:23 AM in response to tom-ttv

Here's a reply to my own comments: Streaming now works, but involved changing the way the m4v wrapper is constructed, to place the stream metadata at the beginning of the file, rather than at the end.

Of course, now that all my streams work, iTunes will happily download the file (the 'Get Movie' option), but won't show the file size or remaining time to download. I guess this is another wrapper issue...

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Answer 7

tom-ttv Author

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Jan 13, 2009 9:13 AM in response to tom-ttv

And problem solved. Now to find out why Apple set my Alias to my full name without giving me the option to select an alias - which is contrary to their stated process.

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