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/
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