Darwin Streaming Server

Breakthrough tonight: Succeeded in taking a live video stream from DV camera and spitting it to the web in real time. The final setup will look like this:

camera –> mixing board –> G4 w/coolstream –> win2k w/qtss –> world

The mixing board will let us add titles and do fades etc. on a live video stream. It outputs analog, so we need an analog capture card for the Mac. CoolStream on the Mac takes the stream and resizes / resamples in real time, generates an SDP (streaming description protocol) file, and unicasts the stream to Darwin Streaming Server 4 (DSS4) running on a dedicated Win2K box. The SDP file gets moved to the DSS4 box as well. DSS4 then multicasts the stream to the world, all with a 7-second buffer delay (almost half the latency of Real or WinMedia).

Since you can’t embed an SDP file in a web page, you make a fake .mov file that references the SDP, then embed the fake mov in a web page.Have been fiddling with this stuff for a while, felt great to make it finally happen.

Still a good amount of fiddling and purchasing to do. Amazingly, there is currently no broadcasting software for OSX on the market, so you have to do the capturing under OS9. Apple will be releasing free broadcaster when they get the licensing crap worked out with MPEG-LA. So we’ll switch from CoolStream to that when it’s ready. I’d be running QTSS under OSX as well, but it would mean buying another Mac, and we already have this Win2K box ear-marked for media serving.