>We have a video camera and video capture card on a windows xp machine. What kind of software, video program will produce a spd file? I have never seen one of those files before? Can we use QuickTime 5 to send a UPD or TCP stream to the server from that machine?
>
>Also 4 is able to send MPEG4 as well? I could not find anything about that in any of the documentation or FAQ's about 4. If that is true, then we should be able to send an raw mpeg 4 stream to the server and it will play on many kinds of players ( divx / media player) ? If so how would we set this up for live stream ( what kind of capture card / software would be needed? )
>
>Is there a way to set multiple speed to send out from the server? If I set it to 250k in the admin area, will it auto negotiate the speed of the live stream, if they drop in speed?
>
>Any help would be appreciated!!
>
>David
You need to read the documentation provided with QTSS where we talk about
doing live broadcasting. Some broadcasters that people use are SorensonBroadcaster
(both Macintosh and Windows available), CoolStream, LiveChannel/ChannelStorm,
and there are a few others that are Unix/opensourced - but have limited codec
support with QT).
The .sdp file is generated automatically when you either export or else
"announce" the stream from the broadcaster/encoder software. You then
need to copy this ascii-based .SDP file from the encoder machine and place
it in the Streaming Server's movie directory. Then start the broadcast,
and then you can connect streaming QT Clients to your stream like this:
In QT, use Open URL...
rtsp://qtss.domain.com/live.sdp
(where live.sdp was the name that you called the announced .sdp file)
Not to muddy the waters, but if you are using PlaylistBroadcaster via the
Streaming Web Admin, or else at the command-line using its Announce protocol (-a)
then you do not need to hand-copy the file to the streaming server movie directory.
Rather, the SDP file is automatically copied over (providing you have setup
a qtaccess file to permit announce/writing to the directory) and it automates
the process. Besides PlaylistBroadcaster, I don't know of any broadcaster encoders
that yet take advantage of this RTSP "Announce" protocol.
QTSS 4 Preview 2 does support MPEG4, provided the files are hinted. Do some
searching around on the net. There are MPEG4 compatible sample files and players
on the Internet from multiple video/network vendors. MPEG4 is gaining a lot
of support and there are lots of products that are in the works by many companies.
However, the current QuickTime 5.0.2 Player does not yet support MPEG4 codec.
As for your last question, if you intend to provide a live stream that works for
multiple bandwidth users (ie. dsl, LAN, dialup, etc.) then you need to provide
multiple encoders. Each of the encoders (listed above) will run on its own machine
separate from your Streaming Server, and if you want multiple bitrates, then
you need to have several different separate encoder machines, each running their
own copy of the encoding software (see the software license for each product
regarding what provisions and limitations they impose regarding this).
--
Billy Brown
