New Wowza Media Server 2.0
I have to say Wowza is a cool media server. I've played around with the developer server a few times and have found the features to be rather nice. To find out that they have released a new version of their server with these great new features makes it a really enjoyable experience. More so when you aren't limited to just streaming to the flash platform anymore. Wowza no supports streaming to IPTV, iPhone, Quicktime, Silverlight and Flash.
Download your free developer edition here
MakeMKV Streaming
As promised I wanted to get back after I was able to play with the new streaming feature in the latest release of MakeMKV. To my surprise this was actually in the last release (v1.4.9) but I was unaware of it. Basically after you scan a disc you can choose which title you want to stream.
Something that I found out that I didn't know about before is MakeMKVCon. As the name indicates this is a binary that lets you run everything from the console. So with the simple command ./makemkvcon stream disc:0 you can stream your movie over an http server. Just point our browser to http://localhost:51000 to find the right vob or .ts file you are looking for and launch it in vlc or another application that can stream over http.
The advantages of running it from the console is it makes it able for your to integrate it with a script. So that brings me to the second part of this post. Getting the blu-ray player to stream directly to plex without having to copy it to your hard drive first. Which in my opinion is great since I have a small hard drive. Unfortunately I don't have a working script yet. It's about 50% there. just have to finish learning the other parts of the plex plug-in api. Once when its done I'll be posting back here so keep checking back.
One thing I found interesting and didn't understand why at first is why the MakeMKV people would want to use an HTTP server to stream the files. seemed like a lot of added complexity when there are other ways to stream the output just as easily. Looking at the HTTP headers it mentioned UPnP. So that was a nice surprise. Once when all the UPnP stuff is completed you should be able to play these files in plex or xbmc a lot easier.
MakeMKV Update
I figures this was very news worthy. MakeMKV has updated their software to v1.4.10. Some of the new features include:
- New functionality: instant video streaming
- Added support for all blu-ray HD audio tracks:
- Dolby TrueHD
- Dolby Digital plus (E-AC3)
- DTS-HD
- DTS-HD Losless (Master audio)
- DTS-HD Low bitrate
This is great news all around. Until now the HD audio codecs weren't supported. I have to say the new instant video streaming sounds interesting. It streams content through a web server. After I look into it a bit more I'll post more details about it.
HTTP Video Streaming
So over the weekend I've been playing around a little bit with HTTP video streaming. A lot of the newer video streaming technologies are starting to focus around HTTP + Adaptive streaming. The reason for this is because HTTP based streaming can scale very easily and Adaptive streaming can adjust very easily client restrictions such as bandwidth and hardware capabilities.
- Microsoft (Silverlight) - supports both HTTP and Adaptive streaming with their SmoothHD.
- Adobe (Flash) - supports Adaptive streaming and will be supporting HTTP streaming in FP 10.1
- Apple - supports HTTP and Adaptive streaming in Safari and on the iPhone.
- Move Networks - One of the first to support both HTTP and Adaptive streaming.
So in my attempt to better understand the world of streaming I ended up playing around with apples solution to live video streaming. Thanks to a few great articles at IONCANNON, I was able to create a little streaming application that would dynamically load video into Safari and onto the iPhone. Very cool stuff. I plan on working with what he created already and getting it to work with my other little side project.
Flash Video Streaming Solutions
So one of my secret obsessions is with video. I like to record video. I like to watch it. I like everything about it. But what I really like about it is the technology behind it. Call me crazy but I love to figure out how to encode a clip or video and see how good I can compress it using different codecs. Maybe that's why I love working where I work. Since I 'm a Flash / Flex programmer I have been wanting to investigate different streaming solutions for flash and see what is available and what will work with my little at home project.
This little project I've been playing around with is trying to get my HDHomeRun (HDHR) to rebroadcast its live feed to flash. I've been investigating technologies like Red5, C++ RTMP Server and Flash Media Server. With anything that requires multiple pieces of different technologies. The hard part is integrating these different pieces together. Luckily the HDHR is open source. So that provides a lot of avenues for development. The only hard part is trying to get the MPEG-TS from the HDHR and convert it on the fly to something flash can use.
So far I haven't been able to get any of the solutions to work. but as soon as I do I'll post something here.