Streaming Video With RaspberryPi

General

Caution: this is a Work in progress, things are being tested. The objective is to provide in the end one or more working solutions for everyone.

Video streaming is a problem

The RaspberryPi camera offers an interesting solution to this problem. It is a very well integrated module of the Pi with one huge advantage: h264 encoding can be performed directly by the CPU as the camera uses the Serial Camera Interface protocol.

So theorically, solving the video problem with the Pi is easy but there are many subtle problems.

Problems

Audio As we use video webstreaming mostly for conferences broadcasting, good audio quality is necessary.

Slides It would be interesting to include slides of conferences while filming.

File It is important to have a file at the end of the filming.

Web It is important to have a large viewer base, therefore a well supported format.

Raspicam basics

http://elinux.org/Rpi_Camera_Module

raspivid is the basic command line used to capture video in h264.

raspivid -t 3 -fps 25 -b 1000k -w 1920 -h 1080 -o /tmp/video.h264

A very simple tutorial : http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2013/05/capturing-hd-video-with-the-pi-camera-module/

Solution

Solution 1 : OGG/VORBIS + Icecast

Basic idea use the PI to capture MP4, stream it locally to a laptop. Merge audio in the laptop with ffmpeg and push the resulting ogg/vorbis stream to an icecast server.

CON Mandatory local network between pi and laptop for socket,

PRO Icecast is simple, open, and handles authentification. The file is saved on the server. Vorbis is HTML5 compatible.

Sources

http://sirlagz.net/2013/01/07/how-to-stream-a-webcam-from-the-raspberry-pi-part-3/

Solution 2 : FLVSTR + PHP Streamer

Basic idea the Octopuce company has a solution to convert live MP4 to F4V. With an USB audio card, we could mux the MP4 and AAC audio and have a standalone solution.

CON authentification is hard, F4V means Flash, requires an USB disk for local backup

PRO the pi can be autonomous

First, authentification. This problem is adressed by solving encryption as well: we use an SSL socket to communicate with the server.

Solution 3 : RTSP

Basic idea Use an RTSP stream with VLC and the V4L driver

CON Non commercial RTSP server are not the norm, requires VLC or Flash player, Quality with v4l is low

PRO Easy to work out

Sources

http://www.ics.com/blog/raspberry-pi-camera-module#.VJFhbyvF-b8

http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/23182/how-to-stream-video-from-raspberry-pi-camera-and-watch-it-live

http://ffmpeg.gusari.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1130

References

http://techzany.com/2013/09/live-streaming-video-using-avconv-and-a-raspberry-pi/