[Live-devel] Is there a mechanism for telling a client to switch streams?

[Ross Finlayson]

As others have noted, you shouldn’t really focus on ‘telling a client to switch streams’; there’s no standard mechanism for this (probably for good reason). 

1/ If you are streaming just to one client, then it’s better to have the *server* adapt the parameters of the stream (e.g., based on RTCP RR feedback), without the client doing anything at all.  Of course, your server will need to make sure that when it changes the stream, it does so in a way that will allow the client (media player) to adapt - e.g., by inserting appropriate H.264 SPS and PPS NAL units at the start of each parameter change.

2/ OTOH, if you really want to have clients ‘switch streams’, then you can have your clients do this based on its own decisions (e.g., based on the packet loss rates that it’s seeing), rather than having the server ‘tell’ the client when to switch streams.

In other words, you can either keep the client dumb and add some smarts to the server (approach 1/ above), or keep the server dumb and add some smarts to the client (approach 2/ above).  I don’t see much point in adding smarts to both the server and client (thereby ruling out the possibility of using ‘off the shelf’ servers or clients at all).


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