Live Streaming

[martinvandiest]

I am looking for way to stream live video content and VideoLAN caught my attention. My network admin told VideoLAN is not really designed for that. He says that you would have to write a program that would allow me to send live content from my Windows computer in Los Angeles to my Apache web server in Texas, then have people access it from there. (From some of your documentation I've read, how the content is accessed is another topic.)

What really confuses me is that in Murray's post, he says that "broadcasting is not allowed over the internet." C-SPAN broadcasts content all the time. I have watched several webcasts over the internet. I am not sure what Murray means.

The content I want to distribute is mine, I intend to use "open" source codecs. How do I make this happen without having to go through a third party and pay an arm and a leg for bandwidth, especially when I have plenty of bandwidwidth leftover on my Apache web server.

[Gibalou]

Murray was not talking about Broadcasting but Multicasting.
Multicasting is kind of a special way of broadcasting that allows someone to save bandwith by sending the stream only once instead of for every people that are connected. And multicasting is not supported on the Internet.

For your purposes, you could surely use VLC and stream your live videos over http (VLC includes a small webserver which deals with streaming videos over http)

Have a look at the "Stream Output" dialog box in the interface.

[wsblurch]

I run an Apache Webserver and want to stream from it. I can't use the VLC internal Server, because I need the Apache for several other Applications. The Streaming is only a part of my Project. Is it possible to use VLC with the Apache? If yes , how?

greetz Tobi

[diptendu]

Apache web server and VLC web server may run on the same machine with different port numbers.

[DanBrwn]

Are there any setup options which will allow the removal of the 1.5 seconds of buffering to the output stream. I am trying to capture live video and display it in semi real time to a client. I always end up with this buffering. I really need something closer to real time. I have the source and all and can see where the buffering is taking place but short of recompiling I dont see anyway to stop the default behavior. Thanks

[DanBrwn]

Are there any setup options which will allow the removal of the 1.5 seconds of buffering to the output stream. I am trying to capture live video and display it in semi real time to a client. I always end up with this buffering. I really need something closer to real time. I have the source and all and can see where the buffering is taking place but short of recompiling I dont see anyway to stop the default behavior. Thanks

[wsblurch]

Thanks for info, you're right Apache port 80 and VLC 8080

greetz Tobi

@DanBrwn, today I try a similar project like you let's look for Buffering

P.S. are you a fan of Davinci Code ....etc.

[DanBrwn]

The buffering code appears to be in the stream_output.c file here starting at line 555.

if( p_mux->i_add_stream_start >= 0 &&
p_mux->i_add_stream_start + I64C(1500000) < p_buffer->i_dts )
{
/* Wait until we have more than 1.5 seconds worth of data
* before start muxing */
p_mux->b_waiting_stream = VLC_FALSE;
}
else
{
return;
}

I don't know how to use the GNU tools so am having trouble with the build. I have put in a feature request to have the --sout object allow you to change this value from the command line. If you are able to build the sources let me know if in fact changing the value of I64C(1500000) to something like I64C(250000) changes the buffer to around 1/4 of a second. Thanks