Streaming on low ressources, low bandwidth

[ammoun]

Hello,

I have an http stream in MPEG1/2 Video (mpgv)
Frame rate: 50 4000kb/s

It's basically the output of a satellite receiver with various resolutions.

480/576
544/576
720/576
704/576

Anyway, I have a P4 1.6GHZ with 512M RAM and 1024kb UL speed... I have been trying to transcode and stream the signal to LAN, but my principal intention is to stream to Internet. I'm using these options in VLC which I found giving the best results.

Code: Select all

:sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=650,fps=24,scale=0.5,acodec=mp3,ab=90,channels=1,samplerate=22050}:duplicate{dst=http{mux=ts,dst=:6666/},dst=display} :no-sout-rtp-sap :no-sout-standard-sap :ttl=1 :sout-keep

I would like to ask you for any suggestion about any improvements... I'm using Http because that's the only protocol I got running on Internet... I got RTSP on LAN running but with no luck on Internet... I'm doing NAT, so do you have any good experience with a particular protocol.

I didn't see any difference with encapsulation methods, but I would be pleased to hear your word.

Codecs: as you can see I'm using mp4 + mp3, the scale 0.5 is sufficient but could you propose other parameters?

If I ever wanted to update the hardware what would be the priority, CPU or RAM... I know both are needed...

Finally, I'm streaming from ubuntu 10.10 and any specific lightweight distribution is welcome.

Thank you!

[ammoun]

Anyone who has an answer to any question from above is welcome

Regards

[Greg]

Http is good choice for internet
If you have 1024 Up, then perhaps increase vb= to 800 or a little more.
With the hardware you have perhaps reduce scale to something lower. Eg 0.3 / 0.4
Experiment for optimum requirements.

Re upgrade of cpu and ram:
Research Intel/AMD/Google Etc for cpu suitable for video transcode. Faster the better obviously.
Quality is more important than quantity for ram. Good quality fast low latency.

You could try Ubuntu notebook version? (not tried it myself)
Not running a GUI desktop may help a little. Perhaps try the Server version, no GUI as standard and also a lower interupt clock 100Hz on Server (250Hz on std version)

Whatever you do, you are not going to get great results from a 1.6 P4

[stwi]

Guess you are also transcoding from a Dreambox ammoun?

I do got the same upload bandwidth as you and I use vcodec=mp4v,vb=800,scale=0.5,acodec=mp3,ab=32,channels=1 without problems, but I got an P4 3.2 doing the transcoding.
Still not a modern CPU but if anyone have any tip if I can tweak the above please do tell.

[ammoun]

Http is good choice for internet
If you have 1024 Up, then perhaps increase vb= to 800 or a little more.
With the hardware you have perhaps reduce scale to something lower. Eg 0.3 / 0.4
Experiment for optimum requirements.

Re upgrade of cpu and ram:
Research Intel/AMD/Google Etc for cpu suitable for video transcode. Faster the better obviously.
Quality is more important than quantity for ram. Good quality fast low latency.

You could try Ubuntu notebook version? (not tried it myself)
Not running a GUI desktop may help a little. Perhaps try the Server version, no GUI as standard and also a lower interupt clock 100Hz on Server (250Hz on std version)

Whatever you do, you are not going to get great results from a 1.6 P4

Thanks Greg, I'll work on what you suggested... I'm looking for the best OS at the moment and already upgraded to 3.06GHZ.

Guess you are also transcoding from a Dreambox ammoun?

I do got the same upload bandwidth as you and I use vcodec=mp4v,vb=800,scale=0.5,acodec=mp3,ab=32,channels=1 without problems, but I got an P4 3.2 doing the transcoding.
Still not a modern CPU but if anyone have any tip if I can tweak the above please do tell.

You got me

Do you have any intensive CPU usage? do you notice any video interruptions?

I do suggest lowering the frame rate... The original is 50 and it's too high.

[stwi]

You got me

Do you have any intensive CPU usage? do you notice any video interruptions?

I do suggest lowering the frame rate... The original is 50 and it's too high.

I've just streamed twice since I set it up and this is the load:


Hopefully means I could get a bit more quality with some tweaking(but what to tweak?)
And no interruptions running the above sout.

Also pretty sure it defaulted to 25 FPS even without the fps setting.

Transcoding is done on a Pentium 4 CPU 3.20GHz running Ubuntu 10.04 x32...
Just using this to follow the hockey, new game tomorrow so will get back to you with the results.

[ammoun]

I'm not turning the forum into a chatting room, but haw was the show

[stwi]

Sorry not answering earlier.

Haven't had the chance to stream any because we had an issue with the Dreambox, it is up and
running again so will probably do some tests tomorrow again.
At the same time VLC on my current computer stopped working, or it started to hog 100% CPU whatever I play so will
need to use Gnome Mplayer from now on(Note to self, skip kernel/ATI GFX updates).

I also got a laptop with an AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-56 CPU connected to the same net as the Dreambox
so may do some test transcoding with it also.

[stwi]

Ended up getting the best results with:
--sout='#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=750,scale=0.4,fps=25,acodec=mp3,ab=32,channels=1,samplerate=22050

This, of course, utilises 100% cpu but actually gives a decent picture.
Got some kind of "buffer underrun" once and needed to restart the transcoding but except that it
worked well.

Although, even with the above fps=25 VLC on the client side reports FPS=50, also tried with deinterlace
with the same results.
Any tip how to fix that?