RTSP/RTP improvements including video on demand support (patch15 or greater)

[charlie]

Wowza Media Server 2 patch15 or greater now includes improved support for RTSP/RTP streaming. This improved support includes RTSP/RTP Video On Demand Support, RTSP/RTP UDP Configuration, RTSP/RTP Session Timeout and Validation and RTSP/RTP over HTTP (QuickTime RTSP/RTP tunneling).You can get the latest Wowza Media Server 2 patch here:

http://www.wowzamedia.com/devbuild.html

RTSP/RTP Video On Demand Support

Wowza Media Server patch14 or greater now includes support for VOD over RTSP/RTP. The URL format for RTSP/RTP video on demand playback is:

rtsp://[wowza-ip-address]:1935/[application]/[appInstance]/[prefix]:[streamName]

Where:

• [wowza-ip-address]: Wowza ip address
• [application]: name of application configured for video on demand playback
• [appInstance]: name of application instance (default is _definst_)
• [prefix]: media type (most likely value is mp4)
• [streamName]: stream name

See this post for details on how to setup an application for video on demand playback:
http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6466

In addition to the steps outlined in the above post you will also need to change the RTP/Authentication/PlayMethod to none to enable RTSP/RTP playback. Once you have the video on demand application configured, the URL to playback the Extremists.m4v file is:

rtsp://[wowza-ip-address]:1935/vod/mp4:Extremists.m4v

RTSP/RTP UDP Configuration

The second improvement to RTSP/RTP involves additional configuration items that improves UDP handling. There are now 3 additional configuration items that have been added to the base Application.xml file:

• RTP/RTSPBindIpAddress: IP address to which Wowza will bind to when streaming RTP over UDP
• RTP/RTSPConnectionIpAddress: IP address published in connection (c=) line of session description protocol (SDP) data
• RTP/RTSPOriginIpAddress: IP address published in origin (o=) line of session description protocol (SDP) data

If your Wowza server is not behind NAT (network address translation) then it is suggested that all these of these values should be set to the external ip address of your Wowza server. If you are behind NAT then it is suggested that you use the following settings:

<RTSPBindIpAddress>[internal-ip-address]</RTSPBindIpAddress>
<RTSPConnectionIpAddress>[external-ip-address]</RTSPConnectionIpAddress>
<RTSPOriginIpAddress>[external-ip-address]</RTSPOriginIpAddress>

RTSP/RTP Session Timeout and Validation

Wowza Media Server 2 patch14 and greater now includes a system that does RTSP/RTP session validation and timeout.

RTSP/RTP over HTTP (QuickTime RTSP/RTP tunneling)

Wowza Media Server 2 patch15 and greater now includes support for QuickTime's RTSP/RTP over HTTP (QuickTime RTSP/RTP tunneling).


Notes and Observations

• When playing back a RTSP/RTP VOD stream using VLC, seek does not seem to work properly. The seek bar in VLC does update to the proper location after the seek is performed. This seems to be a VLC bug and not a Wowza problem. The same problem occurs when streaming RTSP/RTP VOD using Darwin as the streaming server. I have seen similar seek issues with the Blackberry Curve 8900.
• The [install-dir]/content/Extremist.m4v file does not playback properly when using VLC. You can download an updated encode that seems to resolve the issue from here:
  
  http://www.wowzamedia.com/downloads/...Extremists.m4v
  
  
• We are still considering adding support for RTSP/RTP tunneling. This is the method used by the QuickTime player if RTSP/RTP over UDP fails.
• There is a RTSP/RTP Video On Demand demo stream available at:
  
  

  HTML page with RTSP/RTP link:
  http://www.wowzamedia.com/mobile.html
  
  Direct RTSP/RTP URL (QuickTime player or VLC):
  rtsp://174.129.153.104/vod/mp4:BigBuckBunny_175k.mov

Charlie

[WhIteSidE]

Thank you!!!

[willwh]

Tested this out this afternoon - happily playing OD rtsp content on a variety of mobile devices, very nice work guys!!!

Will of course let you know of any issues we run in to!

[pietjuh1]

Very nice work guys. The example is working great indeed with QTplayer.
What are the requirements for the files I want to play?
H264 encoded i think, but some files give a 'moov atom is missing' error or something like that.
Only mp4/m4v/f4v supported atm?

Anyway thanks a lot Wowza team!

[jasonaward]

Thanks for this great work, I've been looking forward to this upgrade!

Question though... are there specific requirements for encoding the files? It seems like my previous encoded 3gp files (mpeg4 format) are unable to play. I've tried a few mobile devices as well as Quicktime players. The examples provided by you, however, play perfectly fine. They also play perfectly fine under Darwin Streaming Server.

Thanks for any assistance!

[pietjuh1]

Non H264 encoded files only play audio it seems, using both VLC and QTplayer.

[charlie]

You can only stream H.264/AAC/MP3/Speex out over RTSP/RTP. At this time H.263, MP4, VP6, SorensonSpark, NellyMoser will not work. We are considering adding support for more formats.

Charlie

[barichon]

Does http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8733 is corrupted ?

[barichon]

Does http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8733 is corrupted ?

No sorry works fine

[evilpenguin]

The link http://www.wowzamedia.com/mobile.html doesn't work for me with QuickTime Version 10.0 (113), on Mac OS 10.6.3. It hangs at "getting info".

Works on HTC Magic, on Nokia e52 and 5800, though..