iPhone .mov files are HEVC Main 10 with codec_tag hvc1. Safari decodes
that fine; Chrome and Firefox refuse 10-bit HEVC entirely, which the
browser surfaces as "playback is not supported" against the existing
/original endpoint. Confirmed against the user's
26-05-01 13-13-26 0525.mov: codec_name=hevc, profile=Main 10,
audio=aac/48kHz.
New endpoint /photos/{id}/playback handles this transparently:
- check the on-disk cache at /data/video-cache/{id}.mp4 first; serve
if newer than the source
- passthrough h264 in mp4/m4v/webm containers (ffprobe to confirm)
- otherwise transcode src -> H.264 8-bit MP4 with libx264 fast/CRF 23,
audio re-encoded to AAC because the iPhone 16 ships APAC audio that
no browser can decode; +faststart for progressive load
- atomic publish via tmp + os.replace so a failed run never leaves a
half-written cache entry
- HTTP Range support so <video> can seek the result
The .mov container is excluded from the passthrough fast path because
Chrome/Firefox refuse to play even h264-in-mov reliably, so .mov always
goes through the cache (transcode-or-remux). /original is refactored
to share the new _serve_file_with_range helper.
Frontend getVideoSrc swaps from /original to /playback. /original
stays for downloads and any non-<video> fetches.
First-hit cost is ~9s wall for a 13s 1080p HEVC clip on this box
(software libx264, 4 cores). Long videos are still sync-in-request
because the browser's <video> can't deal with a 202 response; if that
becomes painful, lift the transcode into a celery task with a polling
endpoint.
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