Google Cast Media Player Library - for streaming from Local Device

Question

Despite reading the documentation it not not clear to me exactly what " Google Cast Media Player Library" is and whether it is the route I need to take for my Chromecast app.

What I am trying to achieve is to play media from my local IOS device on Chromecast. My main aim to to play users videos and photos and not necessarily DRM media.

Up till now I have been doing this by exporting the AVAsset and then passing file address this to a simple HTTP server. This seems horribly inefficient and I thought I could use AVAssetReader to pass a stream to Chromecast. During my research I came across terms

• MPEG-DASH -

• SmoothStreaming

• HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)

  But I do not understand whether I need such complex implementations

I find the name - Google Cast Media Player Library, to be very ambiguous and there is no concise explanation of what it is.

https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/player

Answer 1

This is a piece of the definition given there:

... It provides JavaScript support for parsing manifests and playing HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), MPEG-DASH, and Smooth Streaming content. It also provide support for HLS AES encryption, PlayReady DRM, and Widevine DRM.

I hope this is not ambiguous; if your media has encryption and/or you are dealing with adaptive streams of the types specified (HLS, ..), then this library can help you. If you are playing a simple mp4 or showing images, you don't need to use this library.

There is plenty of posts in this forum on how to cast local media; it amounts to embedding a local tiny embedded web server in your sender app and then sending the url of the media (that is now exposed through your embedded web server via a URL) to chromecast and have your receiver show or play that media tiem (via the url that was exposed).