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Comment by EGreg | Hacker News Reader

Serious question. We currently have this tool in our framework, that we use to play videos from youtube, vimeo, and a whole lot of other sites:

https://github.com/Qbix/Platform/blob/main/platform/plugins/...

We currently already use video.js, and our framework us used all over the place, so we’d be the perfect use case for you guys.

How would we use video.js 10 instead, and for what? We would like to load a small video player, for videos, but which ones? Only mp4 files or can we somehow stream chunks via HTTP without setting up ridiculous streaming servers like Wowsa or Red5 in 2026?

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That's great! It looks like you have a pretty extensive integration with the prior version of Video.js, so migrating will take some work, but I think worth it when you can make the time. That said, for Beta it works with browser-supported formats and HLS, with support for services like Youtube and Vimeo close behind as we migrate what we haver in the Media Chrome ecosystem[1]. So if that's what you need maybe hold your breath for a few weeks.

What are you supporting today that requires Wowza or Red5? The short answer is Video.js is only the front-end so it won't help the server side of live streaming much. I'm of course happy to recommend services that make that part easier though.

[1] https://github.com/muxinc/media-elements

Thank you for your feedback. Yep I definitely understand that Video.js is just the front end. I want to avoid using Wowza / Red5 and just want to serve chunks of video files, essentially, buffering them and pasting them to the "end of the stream" laying down tracks ahead of the video.js train riding over those tracks.

So I'm just wondering whether we can do streaming that way, and video.js can "just work" to play the video as we fetch chunks ahead of it ("buffering" without streaming servers, just basic HTTP range requests or similar).

You should check out HLS and DASH. If you're already familiar and you're not using them because they don't meet your requirements, then apologies for the foolish recommendation. If not, this could solve your problem.

I second that it sounds like HLS/DASH (Adaptive live streaming over HTTP) is what you're looking for, instead of RTP/RTMP.

WebRTC being a more open model for real-time streaming, but nowhere near as easy or scalable HTTP-based streaming today.

However we can all also start getting excited about MoQ [1][2].

[1] https://moq.dev/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BluV8WBGnHY

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