# Nginx and X-Accel-Redirect to serve Quicktime streaming prepared movies **URL:** \ **Category:** NGINX\ **Created:** [June 19, 2008, 2:32am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837 "2008-06-19T02:32:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 2:32am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/1 "2008-06-19T02:32:28Z")
Hi, Using Nginx + X-Accel\_Redirect + Regular Quicktime movies works, but the user needs to wait for the film to be fully downloaded to watch it. Therefore I decided to prepare my movies with the Fast-Start option, but the movies load barely a few bytes and take ages to play. Do I need to adjust the content headers or do I need to move to flash for streaming and using x-accel-redirect? ---
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 9:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/2 "2010-06-21T21:22:48Z")
Thomas wrote: > Hi, > > Using Nginx + X-Accel\_Redirect + Regular Quicktime movies works, but > the user needs to wait for the film to be fully downloaded to watch > it. > > Therefore I decided to prepare my movies with the Fast-Start option, > but the movies load barely a few bytes and take ages to play. > > Do I need to adjust the content headers or do I need to move to flash > for streaming and using x-accel-redirect? I ended in this thread from google. Does anyone know how to stream h.264/mp4 movies to Quicktime player using Nginx+X-Accel-Redirect? I’m experiencing the same problem. Does it have anything to do with the moov stuff not at the correct place in the video? Cheers, ---
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 10:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/3 "2010-06-21T22:00:58Z")
> Does it have anything to do with the moov stuff not at the correct place > in the video? > > Cheers, By mooving with mp4box I was able to get progressive download. But it seems that when I go through X-Accel-Redirect I lose the real streaming ability. ---
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 11:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/4 "2010-06-21T23:26:35Z")
I have found this Rails plugin to easily use X-Accel-Redirect: > **[GitHub - IceskYsl/Nginx-X-Accel-Redirect: Nginx-X-Accel-Redirect is a plugin...](https://github.com/IceskYsl/Nginx-X-Accel-Redirect)** > > Nginx-X-Accel-Redirect is a plugin for rails to send file via nginx. - GitHub - IceskYsl/Nginx-X-Accel-Redirect: Nginx-X-Accel-Redirect is a plugin for rails to send file via nginx. So it seems that I might be missing some headers in order to correctly stream videos? For http streaming to work with html5, the web server must be able to server byte-range requests. I know Nginx can do it because I tried it. Now the thing is to configure stuff correctly so it can do its job. ---
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 3:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/5 "2010-06-22T15:22:33Z")
Here is a video I am trying to stream and enable seeking: [http://www.digiprof.tv/uploads/assets/94/original/tie\_knot.mp4](http://www.digiprof.tv/uploads/assets/94/original/tie_knot.mp4) This one doesn’t go through X-Accel-Redirect, and it was hinted using mp4box. Any idea? ---
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 12:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/6 "2010-06-23T12:07:59Z")
> I can’t make it yet work with mp4 files (hmmm iphone) > Argh! So stupid! There is the mp4 module for that! ---
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/7 "2010-06-22T22:36:43Z")
Ok new test with ogg/theora this time. Here is my video: [http://www.digiprof.tv/streams/restricteds/9/houmos.ogv](http://www.digiprof.tv/streams/restricteds/9/houmos.ogv) FF3.6 users should see it appear in the html5 video player, but it’s not the case. Here is an example of an ogg/theora video being correctly served (by apache): [http://clips.vorwaerts-gmbh.de/big\_buck\_bunny.ogv](http://clips.vorwaerts-gmbh.de/big_buck_bunny.ogv) What am I missing? Is it a content type problem? They seem properly set in my conf file. Other headers maybe? Why is nginx proposing to download the file instead of streaming it? Cheers, ---
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/8 "2010-06-24T14:01:12Z")
Fernando P. wrote: > > I can’t make it yet work with mp4 files (hmmm iphone) > > Argh! So stupid! There is the mp4 module for that! > > Hmm it seems the module is made for Flashplayer. Anyway I tested youtube’s html5 feature (h264 videos) and we cannot scrub the timeline outside of the downloaded zone, so I guess it’s a limitation of Quicktime 7.6.6. Maybe it works with QuicktimeX and iphones, but as I don’t have anything to test I can’t confirm. ---
**Author:** ![thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@thomas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thomas)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-and-x-accel-redirect-to-serve-quicktime-streaming-prepared-movies/140837/9 "2010-06-22T23:47:17Z")
Fernando P. wrote: > Ok new test with ogg/theora this time. > > Here is my video: > [http://www.digiprof.tv/streams/restricteds/9/houmos.ogv](http://www.digiprof.tv/streams/restricteds/9/houmos.ogv) It works! Sorry I don’t know what made it work, maybe a header problem which was not getting updated due to some caching? Maybe I forgot to restart nginx after adjusting its configuration? Anyway Nginx can stream ogg/theora videos and let the users seek inside the video! I can’t make it yet work with mp4 files (hmmm iphone), probably because the video is not properly encoded for being streamed to the web. I’ll dig into that tomorrow: moov, fast-start, etc… all painful stuff to take care of. Cheers,