PHP File As URL Fails Video Stream - php

Question

I'm have a PHP file that contains HTML markup for a video. Instead of using a full URL in the src part of the source tags, I use a PHP file that contains code that renders the video file.
The PHP file name is appended by a random string of characters that serve as a key to the actual video file name. I store these values in $_SESSION so that the PHP file that is rendering the video file will know which file to look for. I also have it use cookies so that nobody can reuse the tokens.
This works great in Firefox and Chrome, but it fails for Safari and for all mobile browsers I have tried on both Android and iOS.
For the sake of simplicity, I stripped down the whole process to simply have the video rendering PHP file while the PHP file containing the HTML markup calls the that file directly without using unique tokens.
When I do that, sometimes Safari loads it (very slowly) and mobile is still a complete fail.
The pertinent part of the first file looks something like this:
<video>
<source src=\"/videofile.php\" type=\"video/mp4\">
</video>
The other file simply has this just to see if that alone works:
readfile('filename.mp4');
So, non-mobile Safari sometimes loads it (very slowly) like that. However, it always fails whenever I add anything else including storing the file name in a variable and calling the variable as a parameter in readfile(), whenever I use sessions, when I use cookies, and basically anything else.
I tried many other ways to break the file down into chunks since I figured that's why it won't play on mobile, but loading the video file directly into the source tags has no problem. The problem seems to lay with how I'm calling the video file.
I have no idea why it works with Firefox and Chrome, but it won't work for the others stated above. I am not sure what to do at this point. I am not even sure if I'm phrasing the problem correctly since all of my Google queries have failed to yield anything like what I'm talking about.
EDIT: I've added the full file code I'm using
First One
<?php
ini_set('session.use_cookies',1);
session_start();
$mp4=uniqid();
$_SESSION[$mp4]='video.mp4';
$ogv=uniqid();
$_SESSION[$ogv]='video.ogv';
echo "
<div style=\"position: relative;padding-bottom: 56.25%;padding-top:35px;height: 0;overflow: hidden;\" oncontextmenu=\"return false\">
<video style=\"position: absolute;top:0;left: 0;width: 100%;height: 100%;\" height=\"540\" width=\"864\" controls>
<source src=\"/videorender.php?video=" . $mp4 . "\" type=\"video/mp4\">
<source src=\"/videorender.php?video=" . $ogv . "\" type=\"video/ogv\">
</video>
</div>
";
?>
Now for VideoRenderer.php
<?php
ini_set('session.use_cookies',1);
session_start();
$file = $_SESSION[$_GET['video']];
$_SESSION=array();
$params = session_get_cookie_params();
setcookie(session_name(),'', time()-42000,$params["path"],$params["domain"],
$params["secure"], $params["httponly"]);
if(!file_exists($file) || $file === '' || !is_readable($file)){
header('HTTP/1.1 404 File not found',true);
exit;
}
readfile($file);
exit;
?>

Answer 1

Did you compared the http headers between your php script and a direct embedding of the video file?
You have to sent Content-Type:video/mp4 for example:
header("Content-Type:video/mp4");
The Content-Length header is also a good idea:
header('Content-Length: '.filesize($videoFile));
There are several other circumstances like some browsers send more then one requests. See a similar question here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3125869/2797243
On the other side: Piping a video file through php is a realy bad idea (server performance) like you described. With this approach you will get no solution that will satisfy you.
If you want to implement something like authorization for ex., best approach is using a streaming server. Regardless the video is being streamed or will be provided as a progressive download.
The only solution I can think of, is to make http redirect to the video file. But I guess this could also fails, specially on the native players like the mobile ones.