Variations Mobile: Developing an ios Audio Streaming App Mark Notess Sarah Schmiechen September 2011 IU Statewide IT Conference
What is Variations? An open source digital music library system developed at IU in a partnership between the Libraries, UITS, and the Jacobs School of Music. In use at over a dozen other institutions as well. Current technology base from 2001-2005, RMI clientserver, with a desktop Java client for Windows and Mac. Uses QuickTime for Java and the QuickTime Streaming Server for audio streaming. Includes teaching and learning tools, as well as methods for authorization and authentication.
Desktop client has some teaching & learning tools
Variations Usage at IU Over 22,000 albums & IU concerts available for online listening. Heavily used, especially for Jacobs School of Music classes: 50,000 of listening per year. Thousands of albums placed on listening reserves at music library each year by faculty. To listen, students must be in a class for which Variations is required, or they have to go to the music library.
Desktop Client Alternatives Browser-based audio player requires QuickTime & Flash plugins. Try it: http://go.iu.edu/3th
Going Mobile: Why ios app? Music school was considering giving ios devices to incoming students; ios has highest current adoption rate. Music services such as Google music use progressive download instead of streaming, but this would raise legal issues as users don t own the audio. Safari audio playback via m3u8 takes over the whole page on ios, so we couldn t have track listing, bookmarking, or other interactive elements on the page.
ios native app challenges Existing web player uses QuickTime for Java, (doesn t work on ios or Android) Apple requires HTTP Live Streaming for streaming over a certain length of time in an app Audio needs to work over 3G, raising bandwidth & bitrate issues
Impact of Past Choices Variations is album based, not track based. Many works of classical music span multiple tracks. Some works need gapless playback. Album context of a work can be pedagogically important. Audio files were already in.mov format so we use Wowza to convert to m3u8 on the fly. We already had web services in place to do authentication (Kerberos) and metadata.
Demo
Current Issues: Precise Cuing tracks Track 1 Track 2 Live HTTP streaming using10-second chunks 10-second chunks Playback starts at the beginning of a chunk May not start at beginning of a track, or exactly at a bookmark Plan to rewrite using AVfoundation framework instead of MPMoviePlayerController
Current Issues: DRAM Variations includes over 2000 recordings streamed from a third party, dramonline.org. Won t work in Variations unless third party implements HTTP Live Streaming. Workaround.
Spring 2011 Pilot one class 12 students one semester Students were loaned ipod Touch devices Variations app preinstalled
Results of Pilot Wowza log files showed some significant usage (100s of accesses), especially right before a test was scheduled. Survey at end of term: Need playlist support Portable non-3g device not too valuable; want to listen while commuting, exercising, etc. Some problems with crashing & other errors
Future plans App is now available as over the air install in Beta Move to AVfoundation framework Need to add features: logging, playlists, open source for other institutions Video (new 3-year grant) Development at IU is moving towards web apps that can work cross-platform; we are involved in the IU mobile application WG
Thanks to John Grigutis, for lots of help with Xcode, packaging and distribution Nate Johnson, for help getting started Chris Colvard, for creating Variations web services and for troubleshooting help Julie Hardesty, for app design Prof. Chris Young & his organ literature students, for pilot participation Phil Ponella, music IT & also the JSOM for purchasing the ipods
Questions? For more info: Variations: http://variations.sourceforge.net ios Beta http://variations.indiana.edu/ios Contact info: Mark Notess mnotess@indiana.edu Sarah Schmiechen, schmiecs@indiana.edu