Hello :)
I need to be able to display any popular video format (MKV, FLV, MP4,...) inside a browser WHILE converting. To do this I've turned to FFMPEG to convert any video to .ovg and spent hours on Google, forums and in documentation but I can't find a way to play the converted video real-time.
Does anyone know how you can play a video in HTML while FFMPEG is still converting it?
You can't use a single format, especially if you want your videos played on iOS. HLS is a good compromise but you'll need a player on desktop browsers. You can find HTML5/Media Source Extension (MSE) solutions like hls.js
With ffmpeg you can generate a HLS EVENT playlist which is something like a combination of live and VOD: media segments are appended to the playlist as they get converted and when the input ends it remains available as VOD. It can be served via HTTP with any web server.
ffmpeg -i <input> [...] -f hls -hls_playlist_type event /path/to/html/dir/playlist.m3u8
ffmpeg supports multiple outputs and you can convert the video to other formats at the same time if you want:
ffmpeg -i <input> [...] -f hls -hls_playlist_type event /path/to/html/dir/playlist.m3u8 \
[...] -f <format2> <output2>
