Implement Apple's LL-HLS compliance requirements for EXT-X-PRELOAD-HINT and EXT-X-RENDITION-REPORT across all sibling renditions
domain: developer.apple.com · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Enable partial segments with EXT-X-PART entries and an EXT-X-PART-INF target duration in each media playlist
Add an EXT-X-PRELOAD-HINT tag pointing to the next not-yet-available part (or an upcoming key/map) so clients can request it early and have the origin or CDN edge hold the response open (block) until it's ready
Ensure every rendition's playlist advertises an EXT-X-RENDITION-REPORT for every sibling video, audio, and subtitle rendition in the same variant group, each carrying that sibling's last-known media sequence number and part number - Apple's authoring spec requires this on every rendition, not just the primary one
Support blocking playlist reload by honoring the _HLS_msn and _HLS_part query parameters on playlist requests so clients can long-poll for the next update instead of polling on an interval
Confirm your origin and CDN actually support long-poll/blocking requests for preload hints - an edge that doesn't will silently degrade you back to regular-latency HLS
Validate the output against Apple's HLS authoring/compliance tooling before shipping a player integration against it
Known gotchas
Omitting rendition reports for audio or subtitle renditions (only reporting sibling video renditions) fails Apple's LL-HLS compliance checks even though playback may appear to work
EXT-X-PRELOAD-HINT can also hint an upcoming decryption key via TYPE=KEY - mishandling that path can cause playback stalls waiting on key delivery rather than a segment
A CDN or origin that doesn't actually block on preload-hint and playlist-delta requests will still serve valid HLS, just without the low-latency benefit, making the failure easy to miss in testing
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