[Live-devel] New LIVE555 version, now supports 'trick play' on H.264 Transport Stream files

[Ross Finlayson]

Happy New Year (for some of you).

I have now installed a new version (2010.12.31) of the "LIVE555 
Streaming Media" code that supports 'trick play' operations (seeking, 
fast-forward, reverse play) on MPEG Transport Stream files that 
contain H.264 video (rather than just MPEG-2 video, as in previous 
versions).

To support this, the index file format has been extended in a 
backwards-compatible way, so that your existing index files - for 
MPEG-2 video Transport Streams - will continue to work as before.

To create an index file for H.264 Transport Streams - and to act as a 
server for such streams - you will, of course, need to download the 
new code.  I have also released new binary versions of the 
"MPEG2TransportStreamIndexer" and "testMPEG2TransportStreamTrickPlay" 
utilities, and the "live555MediaServer" - for Windows, MacOS/Intel, 
FreeBSD, and Linux/Intel.

The new code has been tested for only a few H.264 Transport Stream 
files, and might not work properly for all such files.  (In 
particular, it relies upon a SPS (Sequence Parameter Set) NAL unit 
appearing shortly before each 'I-frame'.)  As always, if you have an 
example of a Transport Stream file for which the indexing (or 
subsequent trick play) does *not* work, then please put the file on a 
web server, and send a link to the file (*not* the file itself) to 
the mailing list, and we'll examine it to see if we can figure out 
the problem.
-- 

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