When I request a manifest for a VOD entry the source flavor for my asset is not returned.
Example URL:
…/playManifest/entryId/0_ebdwm5a2/format/applehttp/protocol/https/a.m3u8
Is there any way to configure the player to request the source flavor?
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Jon
I have not yet solved the problem but I understand why the source is not served. The player code will only serve the source if there is only one flavor of the entry.
If there is an alternative flavor of any kind it removes the source from the manifest.
Our options are to alter the player source code or manually remove the source tag from the database.
Both options are not really ‘out of the box’.
Hi @jonrobins ,
The main reason why the source flavour is only served when no other flavours are available is that the source media file may be unplayable on certain devices.
Media files are generated by many kinds of tools and devices - professional authoring tools, different grades of cameras, desktop transcoders, grabbing devices, etc. Each one of those has a different purpose and a different output format (codec).
For example, professional authoring tools tend to use the ProRes video codec. This codec is great for editing purposes as it has high-quality preserving capabilities but of course, that comes with a price; to wit: the resulting media file is likely to be very very big, size wise.
The end users may have devices that do not have the capability to play ProRes files and even if the device can technically play the source media file, the network the device is connected to may offer limited bandwidth (and obviously, the higher the bitrate, the bigger the file).
I’d definitely not remove the source tag from the flavour asset. It is there to denote that that flavour was the source for all these others and it is needed for certain operations (for example, editing operations can only be performed on the source flavour).
Hope this helps clarify matters,