[Live-devel] Merry Christmas: A new "RTSP to HLS (HTTP Live Streaming)" proxy application

[Ross Finlayson]

As a present for the holidays, I have released a new version (2019.12.27) of the “LIVE555 Streaming Media” software that contains - in the “testProgs” directory - a new demo application called “live555HLSProxy”.  This application is ‘work in progress’, which is why, for now, I’m describing/documenting it only on this mailing list.

“live555HLSProxy” converts a live RTSP stream (e.g., from a network camera) into a set of HLS (“HTTP LIve Streaming”) segments that can be viewed  in a HLS-compliant browser (e.g., “Safari” on Macs or iPhones).  It is a more robust and more portable way to view RTSP streams in web browsers than WebRTC (which I am no longer working on).  The big drawback of using HLS (or similar technology), however, is that it introduces significant latency (about 1 minute, currently).  (If latency is important to you, then you should not be trying to view a RTSP stream in a web browser; instead, view the stream directly using a RTSP-compliant media player (such as VLC).)

To run “live555HLSProxy”, you must be on a system with a running web server (e.g., Apache): 
	- cd to a directory accessible by your web server (e.g., /usr/local/www/apache24/data )
	- run:
		<path-to-live555-software>/live/testProgs/live555HLSProxy <rtsp://-url-of-your-RTSP-stream> <prefix>
	 where <prefix> is a name to give to your stream (as seen by web browser users).
	- If your RTSP stream is password protected, you can add the
		-u <username> <password>
	  option.
	- If you wish to receive the RTP/RTCP data over TCP (the RTSP control connection), you can do so by adding the
		-t
	  option.  (As always, you should use this only if there is a firewall - between you and the RTSP server - that blocks UDP packets.)
	- Note that you can run “live555HLSProxy” several times - for different input RTSP streams - with different <prefix>es
	- Once the application has read its first segment of data (about 6 seconds worth), it will ‘beep’ to let you know that the stream is now available for viewing by web browsers.
	- HLS-compatible web browsers will then be able to view the stream via the HTTP (or HTTPS) URL:
		<URL-of-your-web-server>/<prefix>.m3u8

Note that for this to work, the RTSP stream must contain H.264 video.  For now, no other video codec(s) are supported, and any audio stream(s) will not be proxied; the proxy is currently video-only.

Have fun!


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