[Live-devel] Questions about media server - MKV, rtsp with multiple video media types

[Ross Finlayson]

I don’t have time to answer all of these questions at once; I suggest asking only one question at a time.

However, you should note that the “LIVE555 Media Server” was intended to be a stand-alone ‘appliance’ application that performs just one particular function (streaming from named files - one at a time), and was not intended to be modified.

For the more complex kinds of streaming that you’re interested in, you should instead use the “testOnDemandRTSPServer” application (in the “testProgs” directory) as a model.

Note in particular that you can "stream several video files to one client on demand at the same time” (though I’m not sure why you’d want to do this) by calling “ServerMediaSession::addSubsession()” several times (once for each video file source) on the same “ServerMediaSession” object.

Finally, you asked why the server currently does not implement the ‘end’ of a RTSP range, when streaming from a Matroska file.  The reason for this is that implementing this feature is complicated (because it depends on the particular file time that you’re streaming from), and it would be difficult to implement for a complex file type like Matroska.  (We currently implement this only for WAV audio files, because for such files it’s easy to figure out how many bytes of the file to stream before we’re done.)

However, you should note that there’s nothing to stop the RTSP *client* from handling the end of a RTSP range itself - e.g., by sending a “PAUSE” command (or a “TEARDOWN” command, or another “PLAY” command) once it reaches the end of its desired duration.


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