Streaming Live Video on Linux?

dirkmuon asks: "The streaming video shootout on Network Computing and the subsequent Slashdot discussion touched upon the process of creating and streaming live content on Linux. The article mentioned one method that required $1000 worth of hardware, not including the camera or the Windows 2000 box. Has anyone devised a simple, specific mix of Linux software and hardware for serving up a live video feed, particularly a method that costs less than $1000? RealSystem Producer Basic and Server Basic with a capture card would cost less, obviously, but are there other solutions? For example, is there a Linux way to broadcast *live* video with the Darwin Streaming Server?" This topic was discussed over a year ago, and the answers weren't very encouraging: Real is expensive; Darwin is great but you can't watch the movies in Linux; and Microsoft Media for Linux is vaporware (and likely to stay that way). Has that year improved the outlook?

Cheap and nasty

[brejc8]

If you want something cheap and nasty then have a look at my little streaming toy [c.uk]. It streams JPEG images and runs on a p133 with a £30 ($50) TV card.

Re:Cheap and nasty

[brejc8]

Sorry the link is wrong it should be this one [man.ac.uk].

ffmpeg?

[Covener]

Might want to investigate ffmpeg [sourceforge.net], never used their streaming server but the other aspects of the software do a good job.

DIY

[josepha48]

Do it yourself. There are some out there. I have seen several video projects out there that allow capture from like sony handy cams. Basically you'd need a firewire card ($50) and then a vode camera with firewire (about $500+) and a linux box (cheap 500Mhz+ lots of RAM for $500+). For a total of about $1050. You can then stream the mpegs, of jpegs...

mpeg4ip

[smooc]

mpeg4ip streams mpeg4 stream, works best in comination with Darwin Streaming Server

find it at mpeg5ip.sourceforge.net

Re:mpeg4ip

[Anonymous Coward]

or at mpeg4ip.sf.net

LIVE.COM Streaming Media

[Ross Finlayson]

FYI, "LIVE.COM Streaming Media [sourceforge.net]" is a set of Open Source (LGPL)libraries and test programs that can be used to stream video and/or audio using the open standard RTP/RTCP protocol.

These libraries can currently stream (pre-encoded) MPEG-1,2 or H.263+ video. (Support for MPEG-4 is coming.) (To stream live video, you will need a separate (hardware or software) MPEG or H.263+ encoder.)

darwin streaming server

[cheezus]

Darwin is great but you can't watch the movies in Linux

well, not without shelling out the bucks for the crossover plugin.

I always thought it was moronic that Apple released the server for linux, but not the client. Since they already have a unixish (highly subjective, given that QuickTime under OSX uses a bunch of propreitary apple stuff, but still) version of Quicktime, why not release it for linux? If nothing else it would be another way for them to slap microsoft.

Re:darwin streaming server

[damiam]

Video under X11 is immensely different from video under Quartz/OSX. The majority of Quicktime would have to be rewritten, just to support a tiny fraction of the desktop market. Quicktime for Linux would also remove one benefit of switching to OS X, which many Linux users are considering.

MPEG4IP, RealProducer/Server

[ikekrull]

I have used the 2 above systems to stream video under Linux, with mostly good results.

MPEG4IP works great on Linux, but there doesn't seem to be a player for any other OS, which doesn't bother me much but rules is out for most people.

RealProducer works well on most platforms, but there is a minimum 30 second delay between the live action and what appears on the video feed. This is OK for many purposes, but annoying for others.

Currently, i am investigating the possibility of using FAME and a custom-written server to simply steam MPEG-1 out over the LAN. I figure all that is required is some code that acccepts a connection from FAME (which supports sending MPEG-1 directly to a TCP socket 'out of the box') and then simply accepts connections from clients running some MPEG viewer capable of streaming support (many do support this, on severla platforms) and copies the buffer from the encoder connection to the listening clients' connections.

Is there some special magic behind how 'Streaming Servers' work, since it seems a pretty easy thing to do?