Streaming

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Deep dive into the technical specifications that influence seamless playback for streaming services, including bitrates, codecs, and caching mechanisms.

Streaming Documentation

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Playing FairPlay encrypted content works fine on ios17 but won't play on ios26
For devices that are still on ios17, playing Fairplay encrypted content still works fine. For devices that I've upgraded to ios26 playing the same content in the same app no longer works. I can advance and see the stream frames by tapping +10 scrubbing so I know that the content is being decrypted but tapping the play button of AVPlayer for an AVPlayerItem now does nothing in ios26. Is this a breaking change or is there a stricter requirement that I now have to implement?
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166
Oct ’25
How to delete FPS Certificate from Apple developer account
Hello All, I am looking for assistance with our FairPlay Streaming (FPS) certificates. We are in the process of migrating to a new video streaming vendor and need to create a new FPS certificate using SDK 4. However, we have reached the limit of allowed FPS certificates in our account and cannot create a new one. Issue Details: • We currently have two FPS certificates active in our developer account. • One of these was created using SDK 5, but our new vendor (Mux) requires an FPS certificate based on SDK 4. • Since Apple does not allow deleting FPS certificates from the developer portal, we are unable to create a new SDK 4 certificate. • We kindly request Apple to revoke one of our existing FPS certificates to allow us to generate a new SDK 4 certificate. Request: We would greatly appreciate it if you could assist us on how to delete one of our existing FPS certificates so that we can proceed with creating a new SDK 4 certificate for our vendor integration. Thank you for your support.
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640
Oct ’25
Playback Issues for DRM content when sending CMCD
Since iOS and tvOS 18, CMCD can now be automatically sent by AVPlayer (https://developer.apple.com/streaming/Whats-new-HLS.pdf). However, after enabling CMCD, our streams occasionally fail with the following error: CoreMediaErrorDomain Error -17383 This issue appears to affect only DRM-protected (FairPlay) streams so far. We activate CMCD via the resource loader of an AVURLAsset, before assigning the item to an AVPlayer. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a reliable way to reproduce the issue, and we’ve been unable to gather any useful diagnostic information. Has anyone else observed this behavior when enabling CMCD on FairPlay streams?
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Oct ’25
Email "Updates to FairPlay Streaming Server SDK" makes no sense
Hi, While I don't normally use FairPlay, I got this email that is so strangely worded I am wondering if it makes sense to people who do know it or if it has some typo or what. You can only generate certificates for SDK 4, also SDK 4 is no longer supported? (Also "will not expire" is imprecise phrasing, certificates presumably will expire, I think it meant to say are still valid / are not invalidated.)
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343
Oct ’25
AVPlayer HLS High Bitrate Problem on Apple TV HD (A1625) tvOS 26
Hello, We have Video Stream app. It has HLS VOD Content. We supply 1080p, 4K Contents to users. Users were watching 1080p content before tvOS 26. Users can not watch 1080p content anymore when they update to tvOS 26. We have not changed anything at HLS playlist side and application version. This problem only occurs on Apple TV 4th Gen (A1625) tvOS 26 version. There is no problem with newer Apple TV devices. Would you help to resolve problem? Thanks in advance
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Oct ’25
Low-Latency HLS stream playback issue on iOS 26
We have a Low-Latency HLS stream, and on iOS 26, even though the bandwidth is sufficient, it still selects a low-bandwidth resolution (e.g., RESOLUTION=640x360) for playback instead of using a higher-bandwidth resolution (e.g., RESOLUTION=1920x1080) when using AVPlayerViewController with AVPlayer. This works fine on iOS version 18 and previous versions. What could be the solution to this issue?
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215
Nov ’25
MusicKit broken in simulator with current tools? Can't get token.
Just updated my computer, phone, and dev tools to the latest versions of everything. Now when I run my app in a previously-working simulator (iPhone 16 w. iOS 18.5) I get: Failed retrieving MusicKit tokens: fetching the developer token is not supported in the simulator when running on this version of macOS; please upgrade your Mac to macOS Ventura. Also: <ICCloudServiceStatusMonitor: 0x600003320e60>: Invoking 1 completion handler for MusicKit tokens. error=<ICError.DeveloperTokenFetchingFailed (-8200) "Failed to fetch media token from <AMSMediaTokenService: 0x6000029049a0>." { underlyingErrors: [ <AMSErrorDomain.300 "Token request encoding failed The token request encoder finished with an error." { userInfo: { AMSDescription : "Token request encoding failed", AMSFailureReason : "The token request encoder finished with an error." }; underlyingErrors: [ <AMSErrorDomain.5 "Anisette Failed Platform not supported" { userInfo: { AMSDescription : "Anisette Failed", AMSFailureReason : "Platform not supported" }; Anybody know what gives here? The Ventura message is absurd because I'm on Tahoe 26.1. The same code works on a physical phone running iOS 26.
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203
Nov ’25
Issues with "AVMetricEventStreamPublisher Discover Media Performance Metrics in AVFoundation" Example Code
Hi everyone! I’ve been working with AVFoundation and trying to use the AVMetricEventStreamPublisher to discover media performance metrics, as described in the Apple documentation. https://developer.apple.com/cn/videos/play/wwdc2024/10113/?time=508 However, when following the example code, I’m not getting the expected results. The performance metrics for both audio and video don’t seem to be captured properly. Has anyone successfully used this example code? If so, could you share your experience or any solutions you’ve found? Any tips or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Ps. the example code: AVPlayerItem *item = ... AVMetricEventStream *eventStream = [AVMetricEventStream eventStream]; id subscriber = [[MyMetricSubscriber alloc] init]; [eventStream setSubscriber:subscriber queue:mySerialQueue] [eventStream subscribeToMetricEvent:[AVMetricPlayerItemLikelyToKeepUpEvent class]]; [eventStream subscribeToMetricEvent:[AVMetricPlayerItemPlaybackSummaryEvent class]]; [eventStream addPublisher:item];
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Nov ’25
Will the new Automix feature in iOS 26 be available for third-party apps using MusicKit?
Hi everyone, We’re currently developing a music-based app using MusicKit, and we recently noticed that iOS 26 beta introduces a new “Automix” feature in the Apple Music app. This enables seamless DJ-style transitions between songs—beyond the standard crossfade functionality. We’re trying to understand: Will this Automix feature be accessible to third-party apps that use MusicKit? If not available in the initial iOS 26 release, is there a plan to expose it through public APIs in a future update? Is there any technical documentation, WWDC session, or roadmap info regarding Automix support via MusicKit? This functionality would be a significant enhancement for our app, especially for intelligent audio transitions and curated playlists. Thanks.
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769
Nov ’25
When does AVPlayer exclude _HLS_part query param in LL-HLS requests?
Hello, I'm investigating an issue with LL-HLS playback using AVPlayer, specifically during DVR Live seeking (seeking to a past time). I noticed that in certain seeking scenarios, AVPlayer sends a Blocking Playlist Reload request that includes the _HLS_msn parameter but is missing the _HLS_part parameter. While I understand this is compliant with the HLS spec, I would like to know the specific criteria AVPlayer uses to decide when to drop the _HLS_part parameter. Does AVPlayer intentionally omit the part info when it determines that loading a specific partial segment is unnecessary during a seek operation? Clarification on this behavior would help us greatly in debugging our stream delivery. Thanks in advance.
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149
Dec ’25
AVPlayer: escaped characters displayed wrong from WebVTT subtitles (HLS)
quotes are displayed incorrectly in subtitles of AVPlayerViewController when streaming VOD content using HLS. single quote ' (escaped ') is displayed as apos; double quotes " (escaped ") is displayed as quot; following the vtt specification. The same stream works fine in VLC player, showing quotes correctly in subtitles. subtitle vtt files use Content-Type: text/vtt WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:490014:06:04.000,MPEGTS:158764568760056 example line: 490014:05:46.000 --> 490014:05:50.440 align:start line:83% position:14% and the playlist has: #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES,GROUP-ID="subs",LANGUAGE="da",NAME="Dansk",AUTOSELECT=YES,CHARACTERISTICS="public.accessibility.transcribes-spoken-dialog,public.accessibility.describes-music-and-sound",URI="subs/dan_5/playlist.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=780000,CODECS="mp4a.40.5,avc1.42c01e",RESOLUTION=256x144,AUDIO="audio-aac",SUBTITLES="subs" lære dig endnu bedre at kende." adding 'wvtt' to CODECS list in playlist does not make a difference. Is this a known bug? Is there a workaround? I guess the AVResourceLoaderDelegate can be used to intercept and parse the subtitle files, but it seems like quite a hack and not really intended to be used for this.
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194
Dec ’25
HLS CMAF playlist with multiple DRM changes
Hi Is it possible to have a playlist where I have a indication of a stream in clear, but then, someone started a DRM encrypted period and then someone turns it off. Can I just do the following (I've removed the video segments part, I'm just interested in the parts where I want notify the new drm region )? #EXT-X-MAP:URI="video_2_10000000_t17586401730000000_init.mp4" #EXT-X-KEY:METHOD=NONE ... #EXT-X-MAP:URI="video_2_10000000_t17587374640000000_init.mp4" #EXT-X-KEY:METHOD=SAMPLE-AES,URI="skd://5df0b36ac4bb4d0ff954a73b502ac332",KEYFORMAT="com.apple.streamingkeydelivery",KEYFORMATVERSIONS="1" ... #EXT-X-MAP:URI="video_2_10000000_t17587376740000000_init.mp4?" #EXT-X-KEY:METHOD=NONE Should I insert discontinuity tags or something else? Right now what I can observe is that I got some audio drops when I try to do this.
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359
Dec ’25
Playing Apple Fairplay encrypted content on iOS 26
For iOS17 we've had no problem playing Apple Fairplay encrypted content with keys delivered from our key server running on FairPlay Streaming Server SDK 5.1 and subsequently FairPlay Streaming Server SDK 26. It's built and deployed using Xcode Version 26.1.1 (17B100) with no changes to the code and - as expected - the content continued to be successfully decrypted and played (so far so good). However, as soon as a device was updated to iOS26, that device would no longer play the encrypted content. Devices remaining on iOS17 continue to work normally and the debugging logs are a sanity-check that proves that. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Here's the code (you should be able to drop it into a fresh iOS Xcode project and provide a server url, content url and certificate).
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214
Dec ’25
Are there known cases where DepthData is empty while Face ID is working?
We are experiencing an issue related to DepthData from the TrueDepth camera on a specific device. On December 1, we tested with the complainant’s device iPhone 14 / iOS 26.0.1, and observed that the depth image is received with empty values. However, the same implementation works normally on iPhone 17 Pro Max (iOS 26.1) and iPhone 13 Pro Max (iOS 26.0.1), where depth data is delivered correctly. In the problematic case: TrueDepth camera is active Face ID works normally The app receives a DepthData object, but all values are empty (0), not nil Because the DepthData object is not nil, this makes it difficult to detect the issue through software fallback handling. We developed the feature with reference to the following Apple sample: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/AVFoundation/streaming-depth-data-from-the-truedepth-camera We would like to ask: Are there known cases where Face ID functions normally but DepthData from the TrueDepth camera is returned as empty values? If so, is there a recommended approach for identifying or handling this situation? Any guidance from Apple engineers or the community would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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195
Dec ’25
Query regarding migrating from Fairplay Streaming SDK version 4.5.4 to version 26
Our license service is based on version 4.5.4 and we make use of sample .c/.h files for building license service. We are told that version 4.5.4 is going to be deprecated in 2026 and we should migrate to latest SDK version 26. When explored the SDK, we noticed that only python and Swift based SDk is provided. Does Apple also provide C/C++ based SDK as it is going to easier for us to integrate. If yes, please share the SDK package and sample license service solution.
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170
Dec ’25
Disconnect from AirPlay device programmatically
Hello there, I'm trying to implement feature which uses AirPlay with Apple TV. I want to disconnect from the device programmatically when something happens. Under something I mean a situation when a user wants to stop broadcasting (for example close the PiP window on his phone). I use this snippet: try audioSession.setCategory(.playAndRecord, options: .defaultToSpeaker) try audioSession.setActive(true, options: .notifyOthersOnDeactivation) It works fine sometimes but not always (it works on iOS 18 but it doesn't on iOS 17 or ). So I thought it's a bug and create a ticker to feedback assistant (FB21220013). The support told me write a post on the forum.
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311
Dec ’25