[Live-devel] Can't stream an mpeg-2 file

[Dermot McGahon]

> Alternatively, you can run a standards-based media player client - such 
> as VLC <http://www.videolan.org/vlc/> - to view the video stream.  You 
> can do this by having the media player open the file 
> "testMPEG1or2Video.sdp" (which is present in the "testProgs" directory).

Ross,

Apologies if this isn't 100% live related, but I promise I am converging
on live as a solution, so hopefully this isn't too off-topic.

I am evaluating linux opensource media players and libraries, with a view
to extending or developing a media player which can handle:

  * RTSP
  * Trickplay - pause, rewind, fast-forward
  * MPEG-2 transport streams

The aim is to use an opensource client, with commercial VOD servers such
as the Kasenna MediaBase.

I am finding the area a bit of a minefield and would appreciate any
insights that you might have.

So far, this is what I have found out:

  - xine has an internal rtsp implementation which just supports play
    and teardown. The rtspsession support seems to only for Real/Helix.

  - mplayer website says MPEG-2 PS/PES/VOB support only, but elsewhere
    I see reference to MPEG-2 TS. Unsure if this can be used in
    conjunction with RTSP though.

  - vlc can not currently support RTSP and MPEG-2 TS, as both are defined
    as demuxers, and only one demuxer can be used in the current structure.

  - mplayer and vlc both use liblive for rtsp support. I will run some tests
    and read the code, but could you possibly comment on the level of rtsp
    support? I'm getting the feeling that it's good but would appreciate
    you confirming this :)

I have been working more on games on demand for the last year, but have
seen that rtsp, in the early days at least, was implemented quite
differently by vod manufacturers, and extended at will. I have seen stb
rtsp client code which is very heavily ifdef'd to deal with this
situation. Have things improved in this regard recently or is this still
the case?

Given that LIVE is LGPL, I presume that you have no problem with it being
used in a commercial product? We're not making much money, I can assure
you and I intend to release improvements back to the community where
appropriate.

I'm going to have to program a new gui anyway, so I'm wondering at this
point if I might be as well to use liblive integrate with an LGPL lib
which can do MPEG2-TS decoding. Does this sound feasible or a whole lot
of work and do you know of an LGPL MPEG2-TS decoding lib?

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this.


Dermot.
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