Jwplayer captions compatibility for Android and iOS

Question

I have been experimenting with srt vtt and dfxp captions in Jwplayer 6.

I have not been able to get any of the three types to work on Android, but I have seen srt and Vtt working on Android with a different player. Is it possible to get any of the formats to work on Android?

I have not been able to get dfxp working on iPad (the other two work fine). Is it possible to use dfxp with jwplayer on iPad?

I have not been able to get any of the three types to work on iPhone, but I have seen Vtt only working on iPhone with a different player. Is it possible to get any of the formats to work on iPhone?

Answer 1

Supported Formats

JW Player 6 supports captions in three formats:

• WebVTT, a plain text format that's part of the HTML5 standard.
• SRT, a plain text format that's popular amongst file sharers.
• DFXP, an XML format that's popular in amongst broadcasters.

VTT captions are preferred, since they are part of the HTML5 standard. JW Player supports all three formats across all browsers though, in both Flash and HTML5 mode.

JW Player does not yet support captions on mobile devices (Android/iOS), since it's not yet possible to render them. This limitation will be removed when these devices support Text Tracks natively.

Note JW Player also supports captions embedded in the stream for HTTP Live Streaming. See CEA-608 Closed Captions in HLS for more info

Check here for more information.

Answer 2

Regarding the iPhone portion of your Q.

Take a look at James Herrieven's solution to this issue. It seems he's been successful in getting WebVTT captions working on iPhone.

Usage notes: http://www.dev.powered-by-haiku.co.uk/solutions/jwioscaptions/

Plugin (MIT Licensed): http://www.dev.powered-by-haiku.co.uk/solutions/jwioscaptions/code/jwioscaptions.js

Answer 3

At this time, September 2015, Closed captions are supported by Android and iOS.

but only in SRT format.

Adding Captions The SDK supports adding caption tracks (subtitles) to video sources. At this time, the SDK only supports captions in SRT format.