How to Play or Stream MP4 Videos from Unity Catalog Volumes in Databricks (Flask/Dash)?

[GergoBo]

Hello Databricks Community,

I am working on a Dash dashboard (Python/Flask backend) deployed on Databricks, and I need to play or stream MP4 video files stored in a Unity Catalog Volume. I have tried accessing these files both from a Databricks notebook and from Flask, but I am unable to play the videos in either environment.

• In notebooks, I can read the files, but I cannot play or display the videos directly in the output cells.
• In Flask/Dash, I cannot serve the files as public URLs, and the backend cannot access the volume as a file path for streaming.

Has anyone found a way to play or stream MP4 videos stored in Unity Catalog Volumes, either in a Databricks notebook or via a web app (Flask/Dash) running on Databricks?
Are there any recommended approaches, workarounds, or best practices for enabling video playback from Volumes?

Any advice or documentation links would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[Raman_Unifeye]

@GergoBo - Since notebooks cannot reach out to the file system to stream, you must embed the video as a Base64 encoded string. 

I tried below code and it works well in Notebook as it plays the video in the output.

import base64

from IPython.display import HTML

video_path = "/Volumes/workspace/ingestion/vol1/mp4/file_example_MP4_480_1_5MG.mp4"

with open(video_path, "rb") as f:

data = f.read()

b64_video = base64.b64encode(data).decode()

HTML(f"""

<video width="640" height="480" controls>

<source src="data:video/mp4;base64,{b64_video}" type="video/mp4">

</video>

""")

This works best for small files (<50MB) as it loads the whole video into memory.

Pls try above. I will check for Dash-app as it is more involved and try to get back.