AVPlayer won't play audio files from FFMPEG

Question

Before requesting audio data AVPlayer requests byte range 0-1 from FFMPEG.

FFMPEG gives a 200 response, but AVPlayer requires a 206 response.

This results in the request failing and audio can't be played.

Expected behavior: Play tracks when streaming through ffmpeg

Current behavior: When trying to stream with ffmpeg we get "Operation Stopped"

Sample FFMPEG command:

ffmpeg -i "/path/to/audio/track.mp3" -vn -strict -2 -acodec pcm_u8 -f wav -listen 1 -seekable 1 http://localhost:8090/restream.wav

Player Log:

Error Domain=AVFoundationErrorDomain Code=-11850 "Operation Stopped" UserInfo={NSLocalizedFailureReason=The server is not correctly configured., NSLocalizedDescription=Operation Stopped, NSUnderlyingError=0x600003bcc4b0 {Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-12939 "(null)"}}
!av_interleaved_write_frame(): Broken pipe

!Connection to tcp://localhost:8090 failed: Connection refused

!Connection to tcp://localhost:8090 failed: Connection refused

!Connection to tcp://localhost:8090 failed: Connection refused

!Error writing trailer of http://localhost:8090/restream.wav: Broken pipe

This error is defined by Apple as:

+"The HTTP server sending the media resource is not configured as expected. This might mean that the server does not support byte range requests."

And summarised nicely in this StackOverflow post:

when AVPlayerItem receive a video URL , it do the following task:

    Send a bytes request HTTP Request, and range = 0 -1
    If the response code is 206 and return 1 bytes data, It do the 3th task, if not, AVErrorServerIncorrectlyConfigured error occurred.
    continue send other HTTP Request, to download segment of All duration. and the response of VideoData code must be 206

In my situation , when send range[0-1] HTTP request, the server side give me a 200 OK response, So error occurred.

Network Log:

GET /file.wav HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:1234
X-Playback-Session-Id: F72F1139-6F4C-4A22-B334-407672045A86
Range: bytes=0-1
Accept: */*
User-Agent: AppleCoreMedia/1.0.0.18C61 (iPhone; U; CPU OS 14_3 like Mac OS X; en_us)
Accept-Language: en-us
Accept-Encoding: identity
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Reproduce using this sample app:

This can also be reproduced using standard ffmpeg and adding URL to local or remote ffmpeg URL

Can we solve this by making changes to FFMPEG or AVPlayer?

Marcus Marcus · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-18T09:16:51

I asked this question on the ffmpeg email list and it seems it's not possible:

If I understand your request correctly, you are not asking for a change of a return type (you could probably do that yourself) but for the implementation of byte range requests. I don't think this is possible at all with FFmpeg.

Also it's not possible to get AVPlayer to ignore the byte range request:

it is an apple standard that media providers need to support http 1.1 with the range header (check out the iTunes store guidelines for podcasts for example), so I wouldn't expect it anytime soon

SO Q'n: Is there a way to stop the avplayer sending a range http header field

AVPlayer won't play audio files from FFMPEG

1 Answers