Embedding a live RTSP stream of H.264 video in a webpage

video-streaming h.264 rtsp live-streaming embedded-video
jstol picture jstol · May 30, 2012 · Viewed 99.1k times · Source

I have a server providing live H.264 video over a network via RTSP (rtsp://...), and I've been trying to find a way to display the stream to users in their browser (on at least Windows and OS X - Linux is a bonus). I currently have VLC Player embedded and have it working in both IE9 and Mozilla Firefox 12.0, but it would be ideal if, at most, the user just has to install a plugin for their browser or something similar (as opposed to a whole program).

I am able to use Open Source solutions, but I can't use anything GPL. A Java applet or anything similar is a possibility.

Solutions considered so far which didn't seem to work:

  • HTML5 Video Tag: Doesn't seem to support live RTSP streams
  • GStreamer (Java Bindings) / OSSBuild GStreamer-WinBuilds v0.10.7 Beta 4 LGPL: Plugins seemed flaky with RTSP sources and the WinBuild (my stream gave errors related to a stream SETUP request, while others did not)
  • JavaFX: Seemed to have dropped support for live RTSP streams in its most recent release
  • Xuggler: Licensing seems to pose an issue
  • JMF: Old, no apparent H.264 support
  • FMJ: Doesn't seem to be any support for live RTSP streams

Should I reevaluate any of these possibilities? Any other suggestions (such as in Flash or Silverlight) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Edit: it would be really great to get a solution in HTML5.

Answer

user850234 picture user850234 · Jun 13, 2012

Live streaming must be supported by browser, not the HTML5 player. You can refer the documentation here http://www.bitspace.in/2011/02/html5-live-streaming-media-server.html. Also rtsp cannot be played using HTML5 as in http://www.jquery4u.com/flowplayer/html5-video-rtsp-live-streams/#.T9hzRjkpK0x. If you can transcode the video then you might use HTML5. For reference you can check the answer from Convert rtsp video stream to http stream or refer the documentation from wowza server for converting stream http://www.wowza.com/forums/content.php?39-How-to-re-stream-video-from-an-IP-camera-%28RTSP-RTP-re-streaming. In general rtsp stream opens with external player if there is no player already embedded in your code but dont know how you can give the message to the user to install any plugin to play the stream and how far this will work across devices and cross-browser. Also there is no support for any of the flash player to handle rtsp stream except http and rtmp.

Related questions

RTSP h.264 in google chrome browser

After we are moving over to html5 and many browsers like Google chrome bans VLC web plugin.... Is there any way to play h.264 / h.265 Rtsp streams in browsers this days ?

Read More
Stream H.264 video over rtp using gstreamer

I am newbie with gstreamer and I am trying to be used with it. My first target is to create a simple rtp stream of h264 video between two devices. I am using these two pipelines: Sender: gst-launch-1.0 -v filesrc …

Read More
Encoding H.264 from camera with Android MediaCodec

I'm trying to get this to work on Android 4.1 (using an upgraded Asus Transformer tablet). Thanks to Alex's response to my previous question, I already was able to write some raw H.264 data to a file, but this file is …

Read More