Streaming Video Tools

The number of fantastic, but complex tools available for streaming is mind boggling, these are notes I started gathering as I worked through the redeye project.

The grandparents of streaming video, and snapshots, read, writing and transcoding video and single frame images are ffmpeg, vlc and gstreamer.

Other platforms, such as the wildly cool and inexpensive Raspberry Pi and attached CSI Camera (Raspberry Pi Camera) have thier own set of utilities: like raspivid. Or the NVidia Nano with it’s gst-streamer plugins and nvgst-capture/nvgst-playback utilies.

This writting is as of March 2019

GStreamer Complex, Flexible, Future Proof

GStreamer really complex pipelines but insanely flexible.

  • Allows tees to process more than one outgoing stream
  • Can be “easy” to extend do to flexible pipelines
  • used by nvidia to support it’s proprietary drivers

VLC less Complex than the Rest, and still in heavy use today. Videolan

FFMPEG flexible, complex long command line, also in use today but maybe loosing steam? Maybe not?

A very well written article about streaming video over the internet states that he saw FFMPEG hit limits scaling his video beyond a medium-quality stream.

I was not even considering FFMPEG, since I already sided with gstreamer, or a home rolled solution if I really had to. “Had to” meaning, that I could avoid installing some gigantic infra-struct type of system.

  • Allows simultaneous transmission of different resolutions / bitrates.