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Thursday 01, January 01:33

Format matchmaking

Just a quick update to confirm I am still working on this.

Despite Quicktime allegedly support HTTP streaming, I can find no mention of this in the official docs, and no-one seems to have gotten it working. Looks like RTSP only with live video on Quicktime :-/

I have successfully tested a stream from work using the VideoLAN client, albeit not over our proxy (which is currently dead). I was amazing watching the buns in realtime from work! :D:D

In my search for a way to let people stream in their browser, without having to install VideoLAN and configure a load of stuff, I have come across this java MPEG4 player. I was extremely chuffed until I couldn't get it to work :(. I suspect it only accepts MP4 container format, whereas I am streaming in MPEG TS (VideoLAN doesn't support MP4 over HTTP - ARGH!). It is open source, so I am toying with the idea of adding TS support myself. This will not be a small project thought :-/)

I am still planning on streaming an H.264 stream for people who really want to see the cam whilst I am faffing with Java and the like, but first I want to see if I can write some php code to act as a proxy. I'm really not mad keen on exposing my home router to all and sundry :-). Whilst thinking about this, I also wondered whether it would be possible to write a CGI proggy to cache a small buffer of video on my host's server, and then simply farm that out when other people connect. This would be terrific if I could get it working as it would mean I only need 1 or 2 upstreams. Result - vastly superior video quality! Dunno if my hosts will get shirty about hogging resources on the server though, so may have to write it in C++ rather than php.

Anyway, hope to have a little proxy script in place within a couple of days, and then I will offer a temporary stream.