Upload video to FTP from iDevice

Question

I am working on an APP for user to upload videos to our FTP server

So far, everything almost done but I met one issue is that after users upload videos(.MOV), I failed to open and play the files.

The error message that quicktime player returns is "can't open because the movie's file format is not recognized"

In my codes, I let users select videos by using ALAssetsLibrady

Then load the video into an ALAsset object, before start uploading, load the video into a NSInputStream object from ALAsset, here is the codes.

ALAssetRepresentation *rep = [currentAsset defaultRepresentation];
Byte *buffer = (Byte*)malloc(rep.size);
NSUInteger buffered = [rep getBytes:buffer fromOffset:0.0 length:rep.size error:nil];
NSData *data = [NSData dataWithBytesNoCopy:buffer length:buffered freeWhenDone:YES];

iStream = [NSInputStream inputStreamWithData:data];
[iStream open];

Next step is to set a NSOutputStream and open it, handle uploading operation by following codes.

- (void)stream:(NSStream *)aStream handleEvent:(NSStreamEvent)eventCode
{
switch (eventCode) {
    case NSStreamEventNone:
    {
        break;
    }
    case NSStreamEventOpenCompleted:
    {
        //opened connection
        NSLog(@"opened connection");
        break;
    }
    case NSStreamEventHasBytesAvailable:
    {
        // should never happen for the output stream
        [self stopSendWithStatus:@"should never happen for the output stream"];
        break;
    }
    case NSStreamEventHasSpaceAvailable:
    {
        // If we don't have any data buffered, go read the next chunk of data.
        NSInteger bufferSize = 65535;
        uint8_t *buffer = malloc(bufferSize);

        if (bufferOffset == bufferLimit) {
            NSInteger bytesRead = [iStream read:buffer maxLength:bufferSize];

            if (bytesRead == -1) {
                [self stopSendWithStatus:@"file read error"];
            } else if (bytesRead == 0) {
                [self stopSendWithStatus:nil];
            } else {
                bufferOffset = 0;
                bufferLimit  = bytesRead;
            }
        }

        // If we're not out of data completely, send the next chunk.

        if (bufferOffset != bufferLimit) {
            NSInteger bytesWritten = [oStream write:&buffer[bufferOffset] maxLength:bufferLimit - bufferOffset];
            if (bytesWritten == -1) {
                [self stopSendWithStatus:@"file write error"];
            } else {
                bufferOffset += bytesWritten;
            }
        }

        //NSLog(@"available");
        break;
    }
    case NSStreamEventErrorOccurred:
    {
        //stream open error
        [self stopSendWithStatus:[[aStream streamError] description]];
        break;
    }
    case NSStreamEventEndEncountered:   //ignore
        NSLog(@"end");
        break;
}
}

There is no any error occurs, the video file does upload to FTP with correct file size and name, but just can't open it.

Anybody knows any clue?

Answer 1

I know this probably isn't the answer you're looking for, but you should NOT use a direct connection via FTP to allow users to upload files to your webserver. It's unsecure and slow compared with REST.

Instead, why not write a tiny bit of php to handle the upload, and POST the file from the app via REST? here:

$uploaddir = 'uploads/';
$file = basename($_FILES['file']['name']);
$uploadfile = $uploaddir . $file;

I also recommend using AFNetworking to handle the POST request http://afnetworking.com/

Answer 2

First of all,I guess you meant to reduce memory capacity by convert ALAsset to NSInputStream other than NSData.But you convert it to NSData firstly then convert NSData you got to NSInputStream,it doesn't make sense and would not reduce memory capacity for you have already put your video into memory with NSData.

So if you want to transfer your video via Stream in order to reduce memory pressure(or you have no choice because your video is up to 2GB or more),you should use CFStreamCreateBoundPair to upload file chunk by chunk,see the Apple iOS Developer Library written below.

For large blocks of constructed data, call CFStreamCreateBoundPair to create a pair of streams, then call the setHTTPBodyStream: method to tell NSMutableURLRequest to use one of those streams as the source for its body content. By writing into the other stream, you can send the data a piece at a time.

I have a swift version of converting ALAsset to NSInputStream via CFStreamCreateBoundPair in github.The key point is just like the Documents written.Another reference is this question.

Hope it would be helpful for you.

Answer 3

I have made NSInputStream implementation for streaming ALAsset objects - POSInputStreamLibrary. It doesn't read the whole 1GB video into memory as your solution, but reads movie with chunks instead. Of course this is not the only feature of POSBlobInputStream. More info at my GitHub repository.