RTSP vs HTTP for VOD & help w/ HTTP VOD

[Drexl]

I've been struggling for the past several hours to get VOD running properly. I've done a lot of research and I've come to the conclusion that VOD over HTTP just plain doesn't work and isn't supported at this time, possibly ever. First, I'd like to confirm whether that is indeed the case.

If true:
I came to this conclusion based on this post by Sébastien Escudier and this post by Rémi Denis-Courmont.
However, I am now very confused because Rémi contradicts himself. I found this document by him dated about a year later that strongly advocates HTTP VOD over RTSP. (link). Is this feature planned? Indeed will it EVER be seen in VLC? I feel this is an important feature so that users can set up a personal VOD service that allows them to view their content remotely and dynamically transcode the video based on, for example, subtitle choices.

[Drexl]

If false:
I've been unable to get this to work. The three most helpful resources I've found are the VLC Docs (the obvious first choice), as well as many posts from this topic and this topic. However it's not made a difference. All that I've succeeded at doing is getting the telnet interface to hang.

My apologies for the double post, but there seems to be a limit of 4 urls per post for some reason.
Thanks in advance for any help provided. I'm at a complete loss.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

VoD over HTTP is just a plain Webserver, no?

[Drexl]

I assumed that would be the first response. Yes, it is. However, my problem is finding a way to keep only one version of the file and enable the selecting of subtitles. Can I do that with a web server without making copies? I know VLC can burn a sub track from an mkv during transcoding (my example from above). That is important for me as I don't want to maintain multiple copies of my videos, but I do want to control whether I have subs or not. Basically, I want video on demand, and transcoding on demand to save a few TB of data.

[Drexl]

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but that was a legitimate question. Am I able to do that w/ a webserver? Because I didn't think it possible.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Why don't you mux the subtitles inside the mkv ?

[Drexl]

Why don't you mux the subtitles inside the mkv ?

Do you mean de-mux them so that I have the sub files separate of the mkv? I've tried that. A lot of them are .ass format and I couldn't get them to even play locally. I've been looking hard for a media server that supports internal mkv subs, and have failed. The few that do don't support .ass/ssa, only .srt.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

No, I mean put all of them inside the mkv.

[Drexl]

No, I mean put all of them inside the mkv.

They already are. That's the point. I can launch VLC with

Code: Select all

vlc -vvv D:\temp\test.mkv --sub-track=0 --sout="#transcode{soverlay,vcodec=h264,vb=0,scale=0,acodec=mp4a,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:http{mux=ts,dst=:1337/}"

and burn the subs onto the transcoded file and stream it that way, but I can't seem to get that to work w/ the VLM. Sure I can stream it via HTTP manually, but if I want it to be VOD it doesn't seem to work. That's my dilema. All the subs already are contained in the mkv, but I can't find a way to add the one file and be able to dynamically choose which sub to view remotely. LIke I said, I need transcode on demand basically, all transported via HTTP. I don't know of a web or media server that can do this. I've been looking hard.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

And your clients are too dumb to select the subs?

[Drexl]

And your clients are too dumb to select the subs?

Perhaps I'm too dumb. I've attempted to select subs remotely before when streaming an MKV. However, VLC displays no sub tracks when I do this.
Edit: More specifically, no sub tracks are listed for the file. Instead the only option is to choose a sub file from your local HDD. This is why I started using the script above to burn the subs, but again as far as I can tell this only works when manually launching a stream, not w/ the VOD manager.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

--sout-all to stream all the ES?
And serving the MKV on a natural HTTP server does not allow you, in the client, to select a subtitle?

[Drexl]

--sout-all to stream all the ES?
And serving the MKV on a natural HTTP server does not allow you, in the client, to select a subtitle?

sout-all does not permit the client to select a sub track for me on any of the MKVs I've tried, and I have quite a few.. Tested by connecting to localhost. I'm pretty sure I've tried this remotely as well, but that was awhile back so I could be mistaken.

Here is what I changed form the former script:

Code: Select all

vlc -vvv D:\temp\test.mkv --sub-track=0 --sout="#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=0,scale=0,acodec=mp4a,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:http{mux=ts,dst=:1337/}" :sout-all

(removed soverlay, added :sout-all)

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You don't have the sub selection even if the file is served on HTTP ?

[Drexl]

I was finally able to get the sub selection to work on my web server. There is still the matter of --sout-all not behaving the way you described (for me at least), but for the time being the issue I was having has been taken care of. Thanks for your time. It was a big help.