[Live-devel] Can I use mplayer to capture a video stream from wis-stream to a file?

[Ross Finlayson]

I assume that you can play the RTSP stream correctly (by typing the 
appropriate "rtsp://" URL into MPlayer (or VLC, which I like 
better)).  If so, then the problem is not that you can't capture the 
video stream - you can, using "openRTSP", for example.  Instead, the 
problem is merely that you can't *play* the recorded file.  The 
reason for this is that because the video stream is MPEG-4 (the 
default video codec used by "wis-streamer"), the recorded file is in 
a format (MPEG-4 Video Elementary Stream) that MPlayer or VLC cannot 
play directly.

If you really want your video data to be recorded in a format that 
can later be played back by most media players, then you should 
instead tell "wis-streamer" to use MPEG-2 video (using the "-mpeg2" 
option).  Alternatively, you could ask it to generate a MPEG-2 
*Transport Stream*, by using "-mpegtransport <audio-bitrate-in-kpbs>" 
option.  If you do this, then you will be able to record a *single* 
file that includes both audio and video.
-- 

Ross Finlayson
Live Networks, Inc.
http://www.live555.com/