DXA 1.2 Issue in playing .MP4 in Safari browser/IOS devices

Question

• We have DXA1.2 (.Net) web application with Tridion 2013 SP1 HR1. Facing an issue in playing “video” (.MP4) file ONLY in “Safari” browser.
• This issue has been tested with DXA 1.2 release code (without any customizations) (with Example Site publication and default “Download” CT and rest of the default items without any custom changes to confirm the issue).
• Issue is: “.mp4” file is not playing in “safari” browser. Tested loading “.mp4” in “.htm’ file as well as accessing “.mp4” directly in browser, both gives the same result.
• However, “.mp4” is playing well in “IE” and “Chrome” browser. (haven’t get a chance to test this in Mozilla though). I understand that “IE” and “Chrome” are treating video's request/response differently than “safari”. IE/Chrome sends the request and get the response and plays in the browser all these happens in a single request (status code I seen in the browser network tab is “200”). Whereas “safari” sends out the multiple request to the server to get the (Partial Content) (expecting with “206” Status).
• So, looks like DXA web application not able to handle this properly as “safari” likes. DXA 1.2 always responds with the status code 200 ONLY not 206.
• To confirm this is an “IIS” or “Website” configuration/settings issue, I have tested the same “.mp4” file with “legacy” site as well as “MVC” website in the same IIS with same configuration and settings, both sites (legacy ASPX and MVC) are responding well for the partial content request with response code as “206” for “Safari”.

Anybody faced this issue in DXA1.2 or any other later version (.Net or Java). Also, we could not find any open issues in DXA GitHub as well regarding this. Any suggestion/feedback would be highly appreciated.

PS: we were checking the status code/request/response in developer tools of the browser.

UPDATE

I have installed the clean DXA 1.2 delivery side .Net application without any customization. Also, from CM side, i have setup the example site and published the .MP4 file.

.MP4 file playing well in Chrome but not in Safari.

Seems DXA not handling the partial response (206) as safari expects. At the same server, when i deploy the normal MVC application it does.

Thanks in Advance!

Answer 1

I have made a small fix to make .mp4 works as a partial content. In DXA Sdl.Web.Mvc.Statics.StaticContentModule.BeginRequest method, I have added the below couple of lines to make it work. after HttpResponse response = context.Response;

      response.Headers.Add("Accept-Ranges", "bytes");
      response.Headers.Add("ETag", "true");

Note: I have made this change only for the ".mp4" request in my case. After making this change, chrome also works/serves well as partial content.

Answer 2

In general I would say it is very insufficient if you want to serve large files from the Tridion database, and an MP4 would most likely be a larger file (exceptions there of course).

ECL is a much better mechanism to deal with larger files and especially videos, provided it also comes with its own content delivery of the files. Which is why in DXA we showcased video support though using YouTube and Media Manager, rather than serving MP4s directly. That being said, I was under the impression that the way we handle published binaries was okay, but I guess we never really tested video that way.

As mentioned in my comment, your question is a bit short on specific details, which could help in getting a better answer. I suggest you edit it and provide some more detail about if we are indeed talking about a multimedia Component containing an MP4 video and how it is handled in your view exactly?