[Live-devel] RTPSource/Sink sharing the same groupsock (I think I sent this originally to the wrong group)

[Ross Finlayson]

> Imagine a hospital. There is a patient room and then a nurse room. The nurse sits and watches video coming in from the patient rooms. When the nurse wishes to communicate with a certain patient (she/he noticed something from the active video feeds coming in and wants to talk to the patient), the nurse pushes a "talk" button which then opens up an audio channel between the patient room and nursing room. So long as the "talk" button is active, then communication occurs much like a regular phone call (full duplex). Patient and nurse can talk to one another, hear each other, etc. The moment the "talk" button is unclicked by the nurse, then everything goes mute again. Video, however, is uninterrupted during this whole time. 

Ideally, what you’re basically describing is a type of videoconferencing system.  Although the media communication (RTP/RTCP) parts of this can easily be implemented using the existing “LIVE555 Streaming Media” code (specifically, the “RTPSink” and “RTPSource” subclasses), much of the control and management parts of this would require a lot of new design and coding - *far* beyond what I can help you with for free on this mailing list.


> Now, I mentioned as I was typing this out I think I understood where you're coming from. I think what you're saying is that I abandon the idea of bridging atop the existing RTSP server (the one that, today, provides audio + video), and just use straight up RTP for the two-way audio channel. So perhaps for #4, we have ANOTHER server that's JUST RTP now listening for an incoming connection from the nurse station. And we just scrap RTSP altogether. I can use the RTPSink/Source stuff from Live555 to build this. Is that where you're coming from? 

Yes, I think so.  I’m not sure whether it would be best for you to give up on RTSP altogether, or whether you should continue to use it for the video streaming part of your system, and build the audio calling system using a separate server.  But, as I noted above, this is far more than something that I can help you with for free on this mailing list.


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