I'm trying to obtain playback video streams from some Axis and Hikvision cameras, using Onvif.
I'm doing this in a C# application, and the resulted stream is played in VLC.
Using the FindRecordings/GetRecordingSearchResult calls and then GetReplayUri I can obtain the playback stream (RTSP/H264), but here I have this problem: this behaves like a live stream - I can only use play and pause. I cannot use the time cursor to seek, cannot play in reverse.
So I find this unusable for a playback application - you have to watch the entire recording (days or hours of recording!) in order to see a specific event in time. And once you play it, you cannot go back 1 minute to see it again.
This seems quite stupid to me, so I believe that I'm doing something wrong in my code. Maybe I'm missing some configuration in order to obtain a 'true' playback stream.
My question is: is this playback stream behavior the 'standard' one, and I cannot expect more on this? Or some of you have this working ok (seek, reverse, frame by frame stepping), so I will know it can be done.
Thank you.
Reverse playback is possible, but it is not easy. First, the reverse replay is initiated using the Scale header field with a negative value. As an example:
PLAY rtsp://192.168.0.1/path/to/recording RTSP/1.0
Cseq: 123
Session: 12345678
Require: onvif-replay
Range: clock=20090615T114900.440Z-
Rate-Control: no
Scale: -1.0
After the stream is initialized, you will get GOPs in reverse order, not just reversed frames. I don't know if VLC supports this way of operating.
Be aware that only devices with the ReversePlayback capability support reverse playback.
Please refer to the streaming specification for further details.
This is not a real solution to the problem above, but maybe it would help others to deal with this situation.
Some cameras with which I worked were continuously recording on the same video file (so the time range was not known) and they were reporting (via RTSP) the available time interval like this:
range:npt=0-
Due to this, VLC was not displaying any time interval in the time slider, so it was not
allowing for seek. In my case, it was a requirement to use VLC, so I had to find a workaround to the problem.
This was a module which was acting like a proxy, and it sit between VLC and the RTSP source (camera). So all RTSP traffic between VLC and camera was going via this module which I controlled, so I could easily change the responses from camera in a way which was ok for VLC, so I got the seek capability available in VLC.
Related
I would like to make an app (Target pc windows) that let you modify the micro input in real time, like introducing sound effects or even modulating your voice.
I searched over the internet and only found people telling that it would not be possible without using a virtual audio cable.
However I know some apps with similar behavior (voicemod, resonance) not using a virtual audio cable so I would like some help about how can be done (just the name of a library capable would be enough) or where to start.
Firstly, you can use professional ready-made software for that - Digital audio workstation (DAW) in combination with a huge number of plugins for that.
See 5 steps to real-time process your instrument in the DAW.
And What is (audio) direct monitoring?
If you are sure you have to write your own, you can use libraries for real-time audio processing (as far as I know, C++ is better for this than C#).
These libraries really works. They are specially designed for realtime.
https://github.com/thestk/rtaudio
http://www.portaudio.com/
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Csound
If you don't have a professional sound interface yet, but want to minimize a latency, read about Asio4All
The linked tutorial worked for me. In it, a sound is recorded and saved to a .wav.
The key to having this stream to a speaker would be opening a SourceDataLine and outputting to that instead of writing to a wav file. So, instead of outputting on line 59 to AudioSystem.write, output to a SourceDataLine write method.
IDK if there will be a feedback issue. Probably good to output to headphones and not your speakers!
To add an effect, the AudioInputLine has to be accessed and processed in segments. In each segment the following needs to happen:
obtain the byte array from the AudioInputLine
convert the audio bytes to PCM
apply your audio effect to the PCM (if the effect is a volume change over time, this could be done by progressively altering a volume factor between 0 to 1, multiplying the factor against the PCM)
convert back to audio bytes
write to the SourceDataLine
All these steps have been covered in StackOverflow posts.
The link tutorial does some simplification in how file locations, threads, and the stopping and starting are handled. But most importantly, it shows a working, live audio line from the microphone.
I'm writing a player for an RTMP stream using the ffmpeg API. I know the usual way to get the stream info into an input format is with avformat_find_stream_info. And that works. However, because it's RTMP it takes a long time for it to scan enough of the stream to pick up the info. I've played with max_analyze_duration and probesize and it's a bit better, but it still takes 10-15 seconds to load. That's way too long for my application.
But I'm the one making the stream on the other end, so I know exactly what's in it. It seems like it would make more sense for me to tell the input format what the stream info is rather than asking it to search for it. But I can't find any examples of this, and my attempts to use avformat_new_stream with an input format aren't working.
Does anyone know if this is possible? And if so, could you point me in the direction of how?
Thanks!
This is what is known as an XY problem
Yes, you can spoof the sequence header (assuming h.264/aac). But it won't accomplish what you want. What is happening is your RTMP server (reflector) is eating the first GOP. So even if the analyze was done faster, you must first wait for the first video key frame anyway.
You need to configure your RTMP server to send the full GOP (in nginx+rtmp the setting is wait_key on)
I'd like to capture multiple real-time video streams arriving on rtp protocol, using ffmpeg. When I initiate the recording, by issuing the ffmpeg <command line parameters> command, it always takes a while for the connection to built up and the actual recording to begin. This might be more than 2 seconds in certain cases, which cause a constant time difference at the replay.
How can I extract the information containing the time of the first actually recorded frame from ffmpeg? If it's not possible with ffmpeg without editing the source (which I did, and would like to avoid for other reasons), is there any similar multi-platform open-source tool which could be used?
Not possible without effort on your side. Use something like live555 to capture your streams. All your sources must synchronize to a single clock using ntp and then rtp timestamps can be used at the receiver end to synchronize the various streams. This is not trivial and is used in video conferencing systems. I am not aware of any free implementation of the same.
If you do not have control over the sources then you are out of luck because there is no such things as a common base time across the streams. If you do, you still need to modify live555 and your player to synchronize using the timestamps on the streams and the ntp clock. Like I said, not trivial.
Perhaps gstreamer might already have plugins for it, its been a while since I used it so I am not sure. You could take a look there. (gstreamer.net).
I have a link to some video stream (web cam that is always recording some place). I would like to be able to take a screenshot of what ever is on that video stream at the moment a user goes to my app.
Can it be done and how?
I have looked but all I could find was for taking screenshots out of a movie/video, not out of a streaming video.
I suspect ffmpeg connected to the streaming service as an input could probably extract thumbnails for you. You could either leave it running and pick up latest thumbnails, or fire it up with a system command and make it connect and emit a single screenshot. The latter would be more efficient and easier to code if you have a low number of hits, but would have a high latency on each request.
I did a quick search for you, but the most common uses of ffmpeg with streaming input is to re-format and re-stream, or to use it in personal video recorder setup. Ffmpeg is quite complex, so I could not complete the search in the time I have had so far.
What i want to do is the following procedure:
Get a frame from the Webcam.
Encode it with an H264 encoder.
Create a packet with that frame with my own "protocol" to send it via UDP.
Receive it and decode it...
It would be a live streaming.
Well i just need help with the Second step.
Im retrieving camera images with AForge Framework.
I dont want to write frames to files and then decode them, that would be very slow i guess.
I would like to handle encoded frames in memory and then create the packets to be sent.
I need to use an open source encoder. Already tryed with x264 following this example
How does one encode a series of images into H264 using the x264 C API?
but seems it only works on Linux, or at least thats what i thought after i saw like 50 errors when trying to compile the example with visual c++ 2010.
I have to make clear that i already did a lot of research (1 week reading) before writing this but couldnt find a (simple) way to do it.
I know there is the RTMP protocol, but the video stream will always be seen by one peroson at a(/the?) time and RTMP is more oriented to stream to many people. Also i already streamed with an adobe flash application i made but was too laggy ¬¬.
Also would like you to give me an advice about if its ok to send frames one by one or if it would be better to send more of them within each packet.
I hope that at least someone could point me on(/at?) the right direction.
My english is not good maybe blah blah apologies. :P
PS: doesnt has to be in .NET, it can be in any language as long as it works on Windows.
Many many many many thanks in advance.
You could try your approach using Microsoft's DirectShow technology. There is an opensource x264 wrapper available for download at Monogram.
If you download the filter, you need to register it with the OS using regsvr32. I would suggest doing some quick testing to find out if this approach is feasible, use the GraphEdit tool to connect your webcam to the encoder and have a look at the configuration options.
Also would like you to give me an advice about if its ok to send frames one by one or if it would be better to send more of them within each packet.
This really depends on the required latency: the more frames you package, the less header overhead, but the more latency since you have to wait for multiple frames to be encoded before you can send them. For live streaming the latency should be kept to a minimum and the typical protocols used are RTP/UDP. This implies that your maximum packet size is limited to the MTU of the network often requiring IDR frames to be fragmented and sent in multiple packets.
My advice would be to not worry about sending more frames in one packet until/unless you have a reason to. This is more often necessary with audio streaming since the header size (e.g. IP + UDP + RTP) is considered big in relation to the audio payload.