Stream h.264 with PHP script?

First, you need the metadata of the MP4 file, and second you need an array with keyframepositions in that metadata. I'm not sure how to access the metadata, and how to insert an array with keyframe-bytepositions.

It might indeed work if you add the bytepositions and set the header to video/mp4 instead of video/flv. Please keep us posted, as I don't know if it's possible at all but am very interested!

Hi!

Just tried to simply send the bitstream from the byteposition and setting the content-type to 'video/mp4' -> no chance... :|
I also attempted to send some bytes from the beginnig of the mp4 file before the rest of the bitstream (actually I tried many combinations from some bytes to some hundred kilobytes) to "imitate" a mp4 file header: also no luck...
It seems Adobe wants to have a fully regular mp4 file with a 100% correct header and file structure -- and I have no clue where to find information about that nor how to create such a structure on the fly in a php file.
So I assume: no simple php-streamscript for mp4 files atm :s

I'm desperately trying to do this too.

Here's a list of the resources I've uncovered so far (The QuickTime container is basically the bluprint for mp4):

Quicktime File Format Documentation
[url=http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QTFF/]http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QTFF/[/url]

Atomic Parsley mp4 Info
[url=http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/mpeg-4files.html]http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/mpeg-4files.html[/url]

[url=http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=QuickTime_container]http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=QuickTime_container[/url]

Renaun Erickson has the source for an AIR app on his site ([url=http://renaun.com/blog/2007/08/22/234/]http://renaun.com/blog/2007/08/22/234/[/url]) that can move the 'moov' atom from the foot of an mp4 container to the top. If the atoms inside the file can be moved around in this way and each explicitly states the byte offsets for video content, it should be possible to manually stitch together a file with PHP-written headers and the original video file from the right offset to start http delivery from the point in the video the user has seeked.

I've found that the getid3 library for PHP allows us to introspect the atom data in an mp4 movie and can easily get at the track information and other QT meta-data but I so far can't locate the 'seekpositions' and other information (as shown in the onMetaData callback object in FP9 Update 3).

Anyone have any ideas as to the mappings between the atom heirarchy and the onMetadata properties ?

Maybe there's no close correlation between key-frame byte offsets and time-codes as there is in FLV but I think it's worth a try.

I've just been trying this out a bit.

I started out with a nicely encoded mpeg4 file that plays correctly in non-streaming mode. I then used the qt-faststart (http://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk/tools/qt-faststart.c) tool to move the metadata to the front of the file.

I then adjusted the stream.php script to output a nice mpeg header and video/mp4 content type, and used it as a streamstript.

So far so good: the movie plays nicely, and starts playing right away, before the file is fully buffered (which it didn't do when the metadata was at the end of the file). It also shows the correct total length of the movie, even during buffering.

Now, if I try to skip forawrd to a part of the movie that hasn't been buffered yet, nothing happens. I checked my server logs, and it seems the player doesn't even send a new request to the streamscript with an updated position.

Jeroen, I guess this mean that the problem is indeed that the player doesn't get any metadata? Strangely enough, this article (by one of the people working on flash) http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html seems to suggest that the indices should be available in a similar way as for normal flv files: "You'll get this information through the onMetaData callback in an array with the name 'seekpoints'.".

Any idea what is going on?

Hi!

That could be the reason why the player stops playback when you try to skip in the file - maybe Jeroen can give us some feedback whether the player is able to send the correct 'file' and 'pos' arguments to the streamscript when using it with mp4 content?
Other question: has any of you guys figured out how a valid mp4 file header has to look like when sending a section of a mp4 file? I assume just "copying" the original header will not work as movie length and structure will change? I had a quick look at the URLs Stephen posted but I'm not sure how to build a 'new' valid mp4 file with simple methods inside a script.

Hi!

Looking at the mp4 file format and the ffmpeg source code, I would think a simple ftyp tag, followed by mdat and the movie data should do the trick:

So first an ftyp id tag to identify this as an mp4 file:

0000 0014 6674 7970 6973 6f6d 0000 0200 ....ftypisom.
6d70 3431 ....

0x14 (==20 bytes) is the length of the tag, 0x66747970 (=="ftyp") is the name of the tag, and the rest seems to be specific for the mp4 format (to distinguish it from .mov etc).

Then start the movie data mdat tag:

xxxx xxxx 6d64 6174

where xxxx xxxx should be replaced by the size (as a bigendian 64 bit number) of the remainder of the data plus these 8 bytes, and 0x6d646174 ("mdat") is the tag name to signal the start of the movie data.

After that, just stream the remainder of the movie data.

I'll try to make a new stream.php script with this info later.

regards,
Bas.

Excellent work Bas.

I've been looking in detail at what data getId3 extracts from the Backcountry Bombshells mp4 file that is used in the FP9 demo and a couple of atoms stick out as interesting.

I couldn't find the 'seekpoints' data in the atom hierarchy but the 'ctts' and 'sdtp' atoms (not recognised by getId3) seem to carry binary data (AMF format?) so perhaps there's a bunch of metadata that the flash h.264 encoder puts in there as a nested data structure.

Can anyone shed any light on the purpose of these two atoms ? Without the keyframe/seekpoint information and the corresponding byte offsets seeking within the video won't be possible.

I would post the output from getId3 here but it's really verbose.

Scratch that. Not AMF data - just more atom information not decoded by getId3. There was a bunch of code in the getId3 QuickTime parsing library commented out. I removed comments and can now see the following information:

moov/trak/mdia/minf/stbl/stss
- time to sample (keyframe) table

moov/trak/mdia/minf/stbl/stco
- chunk offset table

moov/trak/mdia/minf/stbl/stsz
- sample size table

moov/trak/mdia/minf/stbl/stsc
- samples-to-chunks table

Video/Audio data is stored in chunks of samples. Each chunk has an offset (in terms of bytes) and can contain one or more samples. A sample is a section of the video/audio content.

In order to make a PHP streaming script for mp4 movies, I think we probably need to use the sample/chunk information to split the file at the nearest sample and then change the data in the atoms listed above so that the file is structurally correct.

Bas - did your simpler method work? It would be great if it did.

I'm still not entirely sure about how to use this information, however, I think it's a step forward/sideways so I posted here. The QuickTime file format is complex to say the least!

Great work here guys. Especially the tool for getting the metadata to the front of the MP4 file: very nice!

If any of you has an mp4 file that should have an array with keyframepositions in it, please put it's link here or send it to me. Then I can parse the meta info to see if there's indeed an array with keyframe-bytepositions in there.

Hi Jeroen!

Here's a file that should have the correct metadata included: http://www.zoetekouw.net/Zooi/trailer2.mp4

The relevant Metadata in mp4 files can be exctracted with the onMetaData events.
They look like :
seekpoints[i]["time"]; seekpoints[i]["offset"]
i being the number of seek points (kind of keyframe).

Here are the metadatas from the trailer2.mp4 posted by Bas :
(sorry for the length, but it might be usefull)

0 - 0;77262
1 - 0.5;144183
2 - 1;222965
3 - 1.5;293303
4 - 2;362199
5 - 2.5;431178
6 - 3;502433
7 - 3.5;574002
8 - 4;646215
9 - 4.5;719302
10 - 5;792508
11 - 5.5;806661
12 - 6;820803
13 - 6.5;835024
14 - 7;1323968
15 - 7.5;1841109
16 - 8;2235287
17 - 8.5;2642789
18 - 9;2855343
19 - 9.5;3235906
20 - 10;3594152
21 - 10.5;3902539
22 - 11;4163846
23 - 11.5;4454491
24 - 12;4708752
25 - 12.5;4978089
26 - 13;5020229
27 - 13.5;5206538
28 - 14;5459199
29 - 14.5;5684215
30 - 15;5891268
31 - 15.5;6079089
32 - 16;6214723
33 - 16.5;6330117
34 - 17;6440116
35 - 17.5;6554910
36 - 18;6716489
37 - 18.5;6873648
38 - 19;7028696
39 - 19.5;7146194
40 - 20;7174362
41 - 20.5;7357374
42 - 21;7511404
43 - 21.5;7694258
44 - 22;7854208
45 - 22.5;7967120
46 - 23;8134946
47 - 23.5;8200341
48 - 24;8245815
49 - 24.5;8333260
50 - 25;8441030
51 - 25.5;8560222
52 - 26;8688468
53 - 26.5;8811256
54 - 27;8936022
55 - 27.5;9062144
56 - 28;9191461
57 - 28.5;9311322
58 - 29;9405987
59 - 29.5;9457143
60 - 30;9475560
61 - 30.5;9583153
62 - 31;9725918
63 - 31.5;9851502
64 - 32;9973659
65 - 32.5;10101358
66 - 33;10269765
67 - 33.5;10406498
68 - 34;10567250
69 - 34.5;10646753
70 - 35;10668518
71 - 35.5;10848876
72 - 36;11116528
73 - 36.5;11313414
74 - 37;11480176
75 - 37.5;11665579
76 - 38;11956247
77 - 38.5;12169224
78 - 39;12366103
79 - 39.5;12659792
80 - 40;12861479
81 - 40.5;13025300
82 - 41;13078062
83 - 41.5;13150198
84 - 42;13345669
85 - 42.5;13516808
86 - 43;13742630
87 - 43.5;13877831
88 - 44;13995151
89 - 44.5;14097797
90 - 45;14223967
91 - 45.5;14368456
92 - 46;14444050
93 - 46.5;14481415
94 - 47;14563200
95 - 47.5;14671074
96 - 48;14724482
97 - 48.5;14756360
98 - 49;14873400
99 - 49.5;14998349
100 - 50;15118407
101 - 50.5;15234657
102 - 51;15347405
103 - 51.5;15456215
104 - 52;15576764
105 - 52.5;15725249
106 - 53;15873175
107 - 53.5;16030674
108 - 54;16088908
109 - 54.5;16269091
110 - 55;16577724
111 - 55.5;16771247
112 - 56;16877810
113 - 56.5;17045929
114 - 57;17219524
115 - 57.5;17299753
116 - 58;17382716
117 - 58.5;17557747
118 - 59;17737405
119 - 59.5;17920654
120 - 60;18093245
121 - 60.5;18272161
122 - 61;18476065
123 - 61.5;18689138
124 - 62;18883946
125 - 62.5;19000102
126 - 63;19105932
127 - 63.5;19256660
128 - 64;19407053
129 - 64.5;19548817
130 - 65;19710883
131 - 65.5;19860489
132 - 66;19896917
133 - 66.5;19953081
134 - 67;20041943
135 - 67.5;20164845
136 - 68;20295873
137 - 68.5;20379700
138 - 69;20491400
139 - 69.5;20590419
140 - 70;20675134
141 - 70.5;20759719
142 - 71;20837353
143 - 71.5;21025566
144 - 72;21353140
145 - 72.5;21651683
146 - 73;21977661
147 - 73.5;22071500
148 - 74;22183314
149 - 74.5;22329156
150 - 75;22468165
151 - 75.5;22609873
152 - 76;22708169
153 - 76.5;22828115
154 - 77;22943777
155 - 77.5;23077548
156 - 78;23138758
157 - 78.5;23155083
158 - 79;23170762
159 - 79.5;23186401
160 - 80;23321989
161 - 80.5;23471715
162 - 81;23656023
163 - 81.5;23778791
164 - 82;23895626
165 - 82.5;23970622
166 - 83;24053704
167 - 83.5;24135385
168 - 84;24214940
169 - 84.5;24303273
170 - 85;24389567
171 - 85.5;24477673
172 - 86;24570594
173 - 86.5;24665449
174 - 87;24758892
175 - 87.5;24854831
176 - 88;24952777
177 - 88.5;25064289
178 - 89;25186210
179 - 89.5;25306352
180 - 90;25413509
181 - 90.5;25519485
182 - 91;25633215
183 - 91.5;25742790
184 - 92;25851064
185 - 92.5;25937908
186 - 93;26022267
187 - 93.5;26107854
188 - 94;26197508
189 - 94.5;26288247
190 - 95;26376399
191 - 95.5;26468010
192 - 96;26569919
193 - 96.5;26680827
194 - 97;26818543
195 - 97.5;26962317
196 - 98;27077318
197 - 98.5;27235176
198 - 99;27425598
199 - 99.5;27607673
200 - 100;27782424
201 - 100.5;27924966
202 - 101;28036636
203 - 101.5;28204655
204 - 102;28443398
205 - 102.5;28593810
206 - 103;28651603
207 - 103.5;28747218
208 - 104;28833646
209 - 104.5;28917874
210 - 105;29027374
211 - 105.5;29077299
212 - 106;29241203
213 - 106.292;29361949
214 - 106.792;29599178
215 - 107.292;29725462
216 - 107.792;29951036
217 - 108.292;30167416
218 - 108.792;30356527
219 - 109.292;30553962
220 - 109.792;30785757
221 - 110.292;31056607
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225 - 112.292;31922798
226 - 112.792;32110489
227 - 113.292;32295577
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230 - 114.792;32756312
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301 - 150.208;43670264

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the info and the test file. I'm looking into seeking for h264 files as well. So far I've come to the conclusion that it's not as simple as mod_flv_streaming (the lighttpd plugin). You can't just simply seek in a h264 file and pass that data to the flash player. It doesn't like that it all.

So I've been thinking along the lines that a new lighttpd plugin (mod_264_streaming?) needs to be a smarter. I.e. it reconstructs the necessary h264 headers (so-called 'moov') and then send the movie data ('mdat') starting from the seekpoint.

The thing is: this is quite a bit of work. Everytime somebody seeks in a file the plugin has to parse the original h264 headers, fix up all the offsets and then send the result back.

My guess is that this may work, but at the same time something tells me that there must be a simpler/easier way to achieve seeking.

If you guys have any ideas or links to other articles it's much appreciated.

Regards,

Arjen

Hi Arjen!

Do you think the metadata really needs to be sent when seeking? This is also not necessary when using normal flv files. I would asume that Flash just caches the data or so...

Greetings,
Bas.

From what I understand, as the H.264 file needs to be consistent to be playable, the file structure must be reconstructed "on the fly" when seeking.
IOW, as stated Arjen, the H.264 header (i.e. the atoms) must be set.

Thus, FLV files are much more easier to handle : no need to send back a sophisticated header.

Hi Bas, hi Chris,

Indeed, that's the main difference between flv/mpeg1/mpeg2 and h264. The first are all simple streams where you could start playing pretty much anywhere in the stream. H264 is using tables and indexes (stored in the moov atom) with absolute file offsets. So when sending only part of the stream, you'd need to patch these offsets. A bit similar to what qt-faststart and qtstreamize do.

I'm just curious what Adobe's ideas is on how this would eventually work. They could 'fix' it in the player I guess, but I haven't read anything about that.

Reconstructing the headers is a pain, but I'll keep you posted on any progress.

Hi all,

First of all, thanks for sharing your thoughts about h264 in flash http streaming. It seems that for consistent file playback with seeking one would need to reconstruct the entire tables and indexes every time the user seeks.

However, for live stream broadcasting (which is my own target), seeking is not required, which means that the incoming client would only have to get the stream from the "last keyframe seen" on the live server.

But does it mean that the index can only have one entry, the beginning ? In other terms, could one do h264 http progressive streaming without having to index the whole file ?

The first task i'm trying to clarify is the binary string that allows to identify an Intra frame in the bitstream, i'll keep you posted if i get to something.

Cheers

Hi Flo,

You mean 'live' as in not pre-recorded (E.g. a live webcam)? I haven't heard of a solution yet. You are likely to run into the same issues as with progressive downloading of h264 streams.

Or do you mean something more similar to: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/broadcaster/ ?

Being able to broadcast 'live' in h264 would solve the same problems, so if you find any more info let us know.

Regards,

Arjen

Hi guys,

Just to keep you informed about some progress I've made.

I've written a basic plugin for Lighttpd (named mod_h264_streaming). Similar to the mod_flv_streaming plugin you pass it a start position in the URL to tell it where to start playing.

There are still some loose ends, but the basic seeking functionality is working. I'll post a link to a demo soon.

Regards,

Arjen

Great info! How did you resolve matters with regards to the correct MP4 headers Flash seems to want?

Hi JeroenW,

When you request an MP4 file the plugin fixes the necessary headers and chomps off the skipped data. (Specifically: it patches all the atoms in 'stbl', i.e.: stts, stss, stsc, stsz and stco).

I haven't tested it on many different streams (yet), but it works fine on streams generated with ffmpeg/xvid264 and Bas's trailer2 file.

For the flash player things are likely a bit different as well. The biggest difference is that seeking in a .MP4 file will re-trigger onMetaData events.

Arjen

OK. The re-triggering of onMetaData isn't a big problem. I'll just have a look at this.

Some great progress here. Arjen - please would you upload your source somewhere, I'd love to have a look to try and get my head around it for a PHP implementation. thanks.

Hi,

I've put up a little page with a demo. It's using the previously mentioned trailer2.mp4 (thanks Bas!).

Note that this is *work in progress* and that we will be putting up the SVN repository with the lighttpd plugin shortly.

Jeroen: It would be really nice if you could incorporate this in your video player. We're happy to help.

Here's the wiki page: http://h264.code-shop.com/ and the demo: http://h264.code-shop.com:8080/longtail_player.html

Regards,

Arjen

The demo looks great!

But what's the username/password for the SVN?

Hi Arjen!

The demo looks excellent. What kind of player are you currently using on the page?

Bas.

Hi,

challefredde: SVN now has anonymous access, so no username/password should be needed. The files of interest are src/mod_h264_streaming.c and src/moov.c. The latter containing the low-level atom shuffling.

Bas: The player is self fabricated, but nothing special. I mainly use it for experimenting with the Flash beta releases (H264, Full-screen, etc...).

Thanks,

Arjen

I get this error when I try to compile it with make on an Intel Mac running Tiger.

..........
moov.c: In function 'atom_skip':
moov.c:85: warning: unused parameter 'buffer'
moov.c: In function 'trak_build_index':
moov.c:741: error: 'off_t' undeclared (first use in this function)
moov.c:741: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
moov.c:741: error: for each function it appears in.)
moov.c:741: error: parse error before 'pos'
moov.c:745: error: 'pos' undeclared (first use in this function)
moov.c: In function 'trak_write_index':
moov.c:886: warning: comparison between signed and unsigned
make[2]: *** [moov.lo] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

Any idea what this means?

Hi challefredde,

Please change 'off_t' on line 741 to 'unsigned int' and you;re good to go.

The full line after the fix will read:

unsigned int pos = trak->chunks_[j].pos_;

Thanks for reporting and let me know if you run into any more troubles.

Arjen

It works great on all my mp4 files (with h264).

I put together a Mac installation package of lighttpd with the plugin:

[url=http://rapidshare.com/files/64649520/lighttpd-1.4.18.zip.html]http://rapidshare.com/files/64649520/lighttpd-1.4.18.zip.html[/url]

Great work Arjen!

Hi challefredde,

Nice to hear that it's working for you!

Would you mind if we put the mac installation package on the Wiki page next to the other downloads? It would be nice to keep them together.

Even better would be to include your installation/packaging script in SVN. What are your thoughts on that? It would make a nice contribution. :)

On a related note. Do you encode your mp4 files yourself? If so, I'm still looking for the best tool (ffmpeg?) and command line options to use.

Best regards,

Arjen

Hi again Arjen!

No, I don't mind if you put it on the wiki/svn.

I packaged it after I compiled it, with Apple's Packagemaker, together with my own additions: StartupItem (start at boot), start/stop shellscripts etc.

Yes I encode my mp4 files myself. I'm using different tools but mostly this combination:
On Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger:
- Perian plugin installed (watch almost all videos in Quicktime)
- Mpeg Streamclip from Squared 5
- x264 Quicktime codec, http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20273/x264-quicktime-codec
Encodes better h264 videos than Quicktime's built-in.
- QTFastStart

Video: 900 kbit/s
Audio: AAC, stereo 96 kbit/s
Res: 640x360 (widescreen)
The video plays fine on iPod's.

What operatingsystem do you use?

/challefredde

JeroenW: It would be great if your player could handle this.

Hi challefredde,

Thanks, I've added your package (and your encoding tips) to the wiki.

We encode the videos on a *nix (Ubuntu) machine and use ffmpeg for this. Development for the lighttpd plugin is done both on *nix and pc, so that the code has seen at least a few different compilers. :)

Just thinking out loud here. Would there be interest in, say, a similar apache module or is lighttpd the leader in the pack when it comes to video streaming?

Take care,

@Arjen,

There would be interest in an Apache module.

Also, would it be feasible to do the same thing in a PHP script? I haven't looked at the code, so I don't even know what language it is written in or what you are doing within the code, but I'd be interested in translating it to PHP if you think that is possible. :)

I use it like an apache module by using apache as a proxy for one domain.

Apache runs on port 80.
lighttpd on port 81.
only port 80 visible externaly

When someone try to access media.domain.com (on port 80) apache forwards it to the lighttpd server.

I've made some changes in the Mac package.

Intel: [url=http://rapidshare.com/files/64941787/lighttpd-intel.zip.html]http://rapidshare.com/files/64941787/lighttpd-intel.zip.html[/url]
PowerPC: [url=http://rapidshare.com/files/64941989/lighttpd-powerpc.zip.html]http://rapidshare.com/files/64941989/lighttpd-powerpc.zip.html[/url]

/challefredde

Hi,

@Will: Thanks for your reply. I'll add +1 to the Apache module. :)

PHP may be possible, but I think it will be quite the challenge. A lot of different tables have to be 'parsed' and patched and it involves quite a bit of bit twiddling. Have a look at the file src/moov.c and see what you think?

Are there any advantages of using PHP over Lighttpd or Apache?

@challefredde: Thanks, I've updated the links on the wiki.

Arjen

@Arjen,

We were all hoping that we could use a simple PHP stream script to do fake streaming like we do now with FLVs. :d

I could certainly do it with Apache, or ffmpeg, or even the Red5 server that I have running already, but for many users, their only option on a colo is to run a PHP script.

@challefredde: working on it!

@Arjen: I've posted a message on your site asking if you could get me going on the changes needed to setup h264 streaming with my player. Could you please send me an email? Then I can add support for this!

New files for Mac again! :-)

- Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard compatible

Intel: http://rapidshare.com/files/65648028/lighttpd-intel.zip.html

PowerPC: http://rapidshare.com/files/65649640/lighttpd-powerpc.zip.html

Arjen:
Tip about H264 encoding on Mac's: For a beginner in the encoding world, [url=http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/]VisualHub[/url] i much easier.

/challefredde

+1 for a php implementation.
Most of us can't install any Lighttpd module (nor Apache), while php hosting services are quite common.

this all is not working cause the file container mp4 format is not a streaming format like flv.

you MUST! rebuild all atooms for every request seeking position.

that might work for small files, but what happen if you have an videofile >30 min, or 1 hour?

thats about 1 till 3megabytes of atooms :)

maybe you add an oldstyle flash 3 loading gfx, just joking.

you must send all atooms for jumping thru the files!

i think you will only do real seeking with rtmp(e) and flashmedia server 3.

give me feedback what you think about this.

best
tom

Is FMS3 not rebuilding the atooms ?

Jimmy (28.10.2007):

Is FMS3 not rebuilding the atooms ?

no, they dont need to do that. they pack the h.264 raw packets to rtmp(e) and maybe to rtmp packets. cause they use an "simple" encryption with rtmp(e) they have a good position to fight for illegal use of their rtmp(e) protocol. break or rebuild en/decryption is another thing then to understand what kind of bytes the flash player sends to a server.

Hi Tom,

Agreed. You need to rebuild the atoms on every seek, and that's exactly what the lighttpd plugin does. :)

You are right, in that for very large files the 'moov' atom can get quite big. There are a few things that can help with making smaller 'moov' atoms.

First there is the way how you encode files. There are encoding options which may help to reduce the size of certain atoms (ctts, stss).

A second option could be to include ZLIB compression in the plugin. You can compress the whole moov atom. I haven't done any tests, but the atoms taking up most of the size definitely have a lot of redundant data.

To summarize, it is not as easy as FLV pseudo-streaming, but (for me anyways) it's a step in the right direction.

Of course, ideas are more than welcome.

Take care,

Hi Arjen,

i look at your c-code and see much work you had. for this reason i want to help what i can.

there is one chance we have.

if we can figure out the vide codec id for the h.264 codec we can remux the h.264 raw packets into flv packets in realtime.

look:
we have 3 codecs in flash 8,9:

h2.63 byte codecID - 3
vp6 byte codecID - 4
bitmap screen codeID - 2

we also have tags for audio and video in the flv file structur.

0x08 = audio
0x09 = video

of course we have serveral data tags, that not so important for this project.

now we need to convert in realtime the h2.64 into 09 video tags for flv.

yes, there is more to do with timecode etc. but this is simple to rewrite.

when we got this, we dont need to use the mp4 filecontainer format.

read the article on kaourantin.net
Will it be possible to place H.264 streams into the traditional FLV file structure? It will, but we strongly encourage everyone to embrace the new standard file format. There are functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264 which we could not overcome without a redesign of the file format. This is one reason we are moving away from the traditional FLV file structure. Specifically dealing with sequence headers and enders is tricky with FLV streams.

Will it be possible to place AAC streams into an FLV file structure? Yes, though the same limitations as for H.264 apply.

-
we will use the flv format for "pseudo" streaming.

take care,
tom

Hi Tom,

Sounds like a nice trick! All you need then is a preprocess tool that converts an MP4 stream into an FLV container. You could even use the existing mod_flv_streaming and PHP scripts to handle the pseudo streaming.

Do you know of anyone who has tried to put an MP4 stream into an FLV container? Any links?

Best regards,
Arjen

hi arjen,

not yet...we need to wait if we got the new specification from adobe or an flv with h2.64.

that means about 6 - 12 month after the fms3 will released (dont know it excatly)

i tryed to write an own muxer and add +1,+1,etc. to the known codecIDs. when i understand it right there are only 15 possible ids in the id tag for codecs, but nothing works here.

we dont know yet if the current beta flash player supports flv with h.264 packets.

we must wait until we got an flv demo file in our hands.

please let me know if you see a chance here.

best
tom

Hi Tom,

Somehow I doubt that Adobe will release the specification of an FLV file with H264 as they don't recommend it to begin with.

I think that for now our best bet is to stick to the actual MP4 specification for pseudo-streaming. There are still a few ways we can improve the lighttpd plugin.

What is the biggest problem for you currently? Is that the fact that you want to pseudo-stream *really* large files? If you have a scenario, we could look into that and see how we can improve things.

Take care,
Arjen

hi, Arjen,
Thanks for your great work and valuable practices.

Have you tried the fragmented movie format mentioned in ISO/IEC 14496-14? That is of the structure like 'ftyp/moov/moof->traf/mfra' style. It is said in A.8 that this kind of mp4 files can be friendly for the HTTP fast-start senario. It's similar to the flv format. I wonder if the beta version flash player can handle these atoms.

For testing purpose, a specific mp4 muxer (other than ffmpeg) is needed to generate the mp4 file.
P.S. It's possible to do live streaming via http, however, the current mod_h264_streaming approach can not achieve that. Let's see how it goes via fragmented mp4 files.

Regards,
trueice at gmail

Hi trueice,

Thanks for the pointer. If I read it correctly, a fragmented movie would help in getting the size down of the initial moov atom. Which in turn would make the movie start faster.

Do you know of an MP4 muxer that supports this feature? The first thing to try would be to see if the FlashPlayer supports these atoms.

Regards,

Hi,

Isn't this what gpac supports using mp4box -frag option? Tried it, flash 9.0r64 (linux) doesn't play these files..

Best,

Hi, Arjen,

I've only found that mplayer has fragmented demuxer support
( see http://lists-archives.org/mplayer-dev-eng/20154-movie-fragment-support-for-mov-mp4-demuxer.html). That will be helpful for us to guess the behavior of the ISO/IEC 14496-14 compliant mp4 players.

Also, mp4v2 has limited 'moof/traf' atoms support.

Maybe we could start at ffmpeg/libavcodec/movenc.c to encapsulate AVPackets into movie fragments(moof), each moof has two track fragments (a/v). Each video chunk only contain one video sample like the flv 'tag' does. Each moof is then constructed by a group of samples which has a random accessable (intra/key) sample as the first one. The 'mfra' atoms are then inserted into the stream to address these keyframes for the player. See 8.37-8.39 and C.7 for more details:)

Regards,
trueice # gmail

hi, EricM,

Thanks, I'll look at gpac's code for details:)

Regards,
trueice # gmail

Hi, EricM, all,

I've also tried with the GPAC produced fragmented movie file, and the flash player just reports:
'NetStream.Play.NoSupportedTrackFound'
However, that file also can not be played by Quicktime.

In hex mode, I found that the file contains a mdat atom prior to the moof/traf/trun atoms. That's weird:P

No enough time, just a small report:)

Regards
trueice

Hi trueice, EricM and all,

Any success with the fragmented movie files?

Could you perhaps post the commandlines of the different tools you've used to create these files? That may save me some time. :)

Thanks,

Arjen

hi, Arjen,

I just used 'MP4Box -frag 100 filename.mp4' to create the fragmented output file. I'll look into this issue within these two days.

The new flash player only supports a subset of the ISO/IEC 14496-12 standard. I've posted a comment about the moof support on kaourantin.net, but still no reply by now.

Regards,
trueice

Awesome work guys! (b) Any new developments? :) My company wants to "stream" 20-30min clips, but 1-2M meta data for every seek seems a bit insane. Any clues on slimming this down? We're building files with FFMPEG as suggested:

http://h264.code-shop.com/trac/wiki/Encoding

@Chris: 3.13 will be there next week I think...

H.264 streaming is already working - www.jeroenwijering.com/extras/streaming.html

3.13 is out - with Lighttpd H264 streaming! [url=http://www.jeroenwijering.com/extras/streaming.html]Here's a demo[/url].

I am on a server using Lighttpd. Do I need to enable another mod like I did for FLVs to get the h264s to stream? mod_h264_streaming? Thanks!

[url=http://www.simplethoughtproductions.com/2007/12/16/h264_flash_streaming/]Testing Here[/url]

Edit: Looks like I do need to get the new mod installed. Found it on the website that had a demo.

Check out [url=http://h264.code-shop.com/trac]this page on Lighttpd H264 streaming[/url]. It has a link to the H.264 module included.

I got the h264 module installed but its still not working, will have to double check its setup and readme to see if I missed something.Looking at your example it looks like you still use lighttpd as the stream script.

[url=http://www.simplethoughtproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/Other/josh/hd_test/video.html]My Test[/url]

Yes indeed, you'll have to set the flashvar "streamscript=lighttpd". But you also need an array with keyframe-bytepositions in your H264 files. Some links on how to do this is also on the code-shop website.

OK, The video I am using is the one from your sample. I downloaded and uploaded it without editing it. I wouldn't think this would change the file. I wonder what is going on then?

No indeed, if you just download the sample (the movietrailer - not the 5sec clip on my site!), it should work...

Yeah I downloaded the trailer 2 file, and uploaded it to my server. Then had my admin install the mod_h264... I will have to double check with him and make sure it was enabled and such, it seems to load up the file, ready to stream, but if you seek some where, it goes to that point, but starts playing from the begining but with the time stamp you seeked to...

Hey, I help admin Josh's server and we just got H.264 streaming working. Our server is using Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) and lighttpd 1.4.18 from the repositories. I tried to use the Feisty repo for the binary mod_h264_streaming module, however it won't install unless you install lighty 1.4.13 or force it through dpkg, so I just grabbed the source, installed, and setup as follows:

Download and build the module:
$ svn co http://h264.code-shop.com/svn/h264/trunk/lighttpd-1.4.18 lighttpd-1.4.18
$ cd lighttpd-1.4.18
$ ./configure
$ make

Copy the module and set up lighty to use it:
$ sudo cp src/.libs/mod_h264_streaming.so /usr/lib/lighttpd/
$ cd /etc/lighttpd/conf-available
$ sudo touch 10-h264.conf
$ sudo nano 10-h264.conf

Put something like this in the file:
## Load the H.264 Streaming module
server.modules += ( "mod_h264_streaming" )
## Tell the module what to stream
h264-streaming.extensions = ( ".mp4" )

Then, enable the config and reload lighty:
$ sudo ln 10-h264.conf ../conf-enabled/
$ sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload

After all that you should have H.264 streaming for Flash working.

Hi all

I was told somewhere that live streaming with h264 in upcoming Flash products won't use the regular container format... I hope live streaming will still be possible using poor-man's (no offense intended, or this would be self-offense :p) means.

Here's the deal: how can you live stream h264 if
* the moov atom is only written at the end of encoding
* you don't know the total length nor keyframes addresses before flushing the metadata

My guess is the encoders keep such metadata in memory before finishing the encoding/muxing. Maybe this progressively-enriched data could be exported before the end of the process... I'll try looking into x264 to see if this is not just a proof of dumb intuition.

If there is a way to get this data before ending the encoding process, then it should be possible to reconstruct headers (based on this very lighty mod) every once in a while.

Anyone tried the same ? Any suggestions ?

Cheers, and, again, well done !

Flo

Hi!

Feedback on H.264 Pseudo Streaming with Lighttpd: Installed the 3.13 player on our test server, and tested it with a 200MB/30min H.264 MP4 file. Everything worked well, but when limiting the Lighttpd bandwidth to 150K/s, skipping required nearly 10 seconds buffering. I expect this to be because of the rather large amount of meta data that needs to be downloaded every time I skip in the file :-/ Compressing this data was suggester above, but any clues on this? Does 3.13 support this? :)

@Chris: a quick calculation, you're using about 110 kbps? Please make sure that the 'bufferlength' variable isn't set to 10sec or so, but to a very small amount (1?).

It might be that there's a lot of metadata, but I doubt (hope) it's not a couple 100s of kilobytes...

On a sidenote, with our Bits on the Run system, we are working on modifying the mod_flv_streaming and mod_h264_streaming a bit, so it supports a quick burst (non-limited bandwidth) for the first couple of seconds. That'd decrease any waiting times when skipping through Lightppd-streamed movies.

Hi JeroenW!

Modifying the mod_h264_streaming sounds intereseting, where can I read more about it (or download a beta version)?

Hi Jeroen,

Any more info on the 'quick burst' you mentioned? If you could explain a bit more, or have any pointers, I'd be happy to help.

Best regards,

Arjen

Hi all,

Finally, I found a valid fragmented 3gpp2 video sample:
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/mobileVideo_3gp/MAV_0001.3G2

(It seems being recorded with a SANYO W21SA mobile phone.)

You can use the cmdline:
$ ./AtomicParsley MAV_0001.3G2 -T
to check its atom tree.

This file can be played-back by mplayer and Quicktime, while the flash player still reports
'NetStream.Play.NoSupportedTrackFound'

Conclusion: the flash player does not support fragmented movie for now.

Hi!

I finally set up my lighttpd server last night with mod_h264_streaming - and all I can say is, it's working like a charm; it also assorts well with mod_secdownload and bandwith limitation.
It's successfully streaming a more than 30min. h264 file with over 500MB data and skipping takes just two or three seconds (that's mainly because of the bandwith limitation, I suppose).
So thanks a lot guys for your great work!!

btw: One of my machines had flash player 9.0 r60 (the early beta with h264 support), and it couldn't skip in content, with upgrade to r115 it's working fine now.

where is the mod_h264_streaming.so file?

after I

./configure
make

I can't fine .so any where to copy over. Can someone help?

Hi trueice,

Thanks for the feedback on the fragmented movie files. Too bad the flash player doesn't support it (yet). It would have been neat.

Arjen

Hi, just stumbled upon:
http://www.razorberry.com/blog/archives/2004/08/22/lzw-compression-methods-in-as2/

Might help with the atom size issue...

For very large files, moov.c does not shave off any bytes -- it sends the entire file.

Hi Jason,

Do you mean that seeking doesn't work and that it starts playback from the beginning?

There are a few cases which aren't covered yet (like 64 bit atoms). If you have a link to an example file, I can try and fix it.

Regards,

i couldn't make it run with mod_secdownload, any tips would be appreciated

ok i fixed it :D

if it happens to you just make sure you've enabled mod_h264 after mod_secdownload.

ex:

server.modules += ( "mod_secdownload" )
server.modules += ( "mod_h264_streaming" )

:D

I've got the same problem. Seeking isn't working very well. I use ffmpeg with libx264 for h.264 conversions and AAC sound codec.

here's the URL: http://cahe.mendrek.net/pkkb/upload.php <= upload and playlist selector.

Please help :-)

the new url: http://at.tasystems.pl

Hi Cahe,

Could you be a little more specific about what is not working? I've checked your new url, and the videos (like: http://at.tasystems.pl/watch.php?5) play and seek fine.

Hi,

Well... it is now :-). I user qtfaststart as suggested on h264 streaming page... and it worked ;-). Thanks.

But not quite...

Look at this: http://at.tasystems.pl/watch.php?17

It's streaming alright, but if you click somewhere to start from the middle you have 50-50 chance it's going to stop and get back to initial state (covered with the jpeg, stopped). How do you avoid that? flash r115/firefox/windows

If just tried on the same system (r115/ff/win) and been seeking like mad. It never restarted. :)

Any change if you could track down if it always fails on a certain seekpoint? (Example URL: http://movie.mendrek.net/329fe24fff767d73df8bbc2c6a106466a83b1620.mp4?start=33.133). That would certainly help.

If you have FireBug installed (Firefox plugin) you can see the exact requests that the player makes in the 'Net' tab.

Thanks,

Arjen

Can you please share your lighttpd.conf? I couldn't manage it to work on a linux box properly, server crashes with 100 concurrent connections :(

no lighty stuff here? its bad

Hello All,
Thanks to read,
Is RED5 capable to stream file format other than flv and mp3 , if possible than how....
Suggest what u have idea about it.

Hi all,

Dirty solution I use for "pseudo-stream" HD is to create 10 mp4 files of my original mp4 file which have a different start delay :

1.mp4 (0:00 -> 2:00) (33Mo)
2.mp4 (0:20 -> 2:00) (25 Mo)
3.mp4 (0:40 -> 2:00) (15 Mo)
4.mp4 (1:00 -> 2:00) (10 Mo)
........

I know it's very very dirty and it takes a lot of disk space on the server but it works well. Waiting for a cleaner solution ;-)

Hi Tom,

That's what this thread is all about. You can use pseudo streaming using Jeroen's latest player and a lighttpd plugin called mod_h264_streaming (http://h264.code-shop.com/trac). This would be the clean solution. :)

So I've tested this implementation of it:
http://h264.code-shop.com:8080/longtail_player.html

Although it's functional it doesnt seem that responsive. Is this because of the time needed to buffer (downloading the extra metadata) or the work being done on the server side to recaluclulate this?

I've been doing some testing myself and i cant see why you just can't calculate the nearest keyframe serverside, cut the video here and add a h.264 header to it, repackage the mp4 file and send this (I dont know how the audio will act though). The flash player will think it's a new video and play from the start, but if you create your own progressbar wrapper and keep track of what time the video is at, you should be able to send the time back to the server if you seek again.

Now, I've never programmed in flash so this might be what you guys have been talking about above, so sorry if i've missunderstood anything

Hi Dave,

Everytime you seek to a different part of the file, the MP4 header is patched (quick) and transferred to the client (slowish, depending on the size of the header).

What you describe is pretty much how it works. The video is cut and a new h264 header is created. The flash player thinks it's a new video and plays from the start; Seeking into the video with keeping track of the progressbar is what Jeroen has added in his latest player.

The responsiveness can still be improved. For example by compressing the patched h264 header.

Ideas and thoughts are more than welcome.

Regards,

Ok, sorry i'm still a little bit of a noob on this and just thinking how it will work (At least i can say great minds think a like)

Anyway, is the header static for each video? I've looked a raw H.264 file with mpeg4ip (h254_parse) and as far as i can tell it is would be for the whole stream (I've even tried cutting the file and putting the same header back on and both vlc and wmp10 can play it). Again audio and muxing in mp4 might be different.

So can you store the header of the video on the client and patch as you go in flash? Does the flash player allow you to connect to a local datastream where you can throw in these bytes as it plays? Kind of like a custom datasource in Java media framework.

I've started to read through the iso spec on both mpeg4 - avc and mp4 and from what i can tell the header isnt really that big. What size and what is exactly needed? I do want to really help so i'll continue to look myself but extra help would be appreciated.

Hi Dave,

Flash doesn't really provide any low-level access to the video played (As far as I know). It just expects a properly formatted MP4 file. When you tell it to play a video it expects a 'complete' MP4 video, and always reads the headers first and then the audio/video data.

So the lighttpd plugin does exactly that. It generates a completely new MP4 file, but does so by only needing to read the header and patch it up. The upside of this is that you don't need to store anything locally on your server, the file is patched dynamically.

So when a new start time is requested by the flash player. The plugin patches the header. It's not rocket science, it just means updating the times/frames/offsets in the different header parts (also called atoms in MP4). After the header there is this big chunk of actual audio/video data. According to the start-time we calculate how many bytes we can skip from this (mdat) chunk.

The plugin then sends the header first (from memory) and the megabytes of audio/video data is transferred using lighttpd's memory mapped feature.

I'm sure there are a lot of different configurations out there which may perform differently, but for the videos (about 30 mins long) I've encoded the seeking is rather quick, especially when you have the feedback (=timeline) of the buffering in the flash player. It really takes less than a second to start playback at a new position.

Of course, if you have any videos where it constantly takes, say, 5 seconds, I'd be happy to investigate and see how we can improve things.

Kind regards,

One second is fine. The above link i mentioned was taking over 10 seconds. My net connection is ok but i should have tried it at work where it's 24mbit

Maybe the site is just a little slow. Do you have any other examples i can test?

Sound like all the hard work is done already - well done to everyone involved

Hello
I've tested the solution, that uses lighttpd server and it works great but we're planning to introduce the on-demand internet TV in our company and the technology we're using forbids us to install new web serwers (like lighttpd). Is there a way to make this patch similar to that written in PHP for flv videos (to provide the seeking functionality)?

Regards

Hi Pszemus,

Currently only a Lighttpd version is available, I'm not aware of any PHP scripts providing the seeking functionality.

Has an apache2 module for this been released or only for lighttpd ?

Hi Gordon,

I haven´t had many requests yet for an apache2 module. If you run Apache, you can always setup Lighttpd to serve just the video files, and that´s what most people seem to do. On the other hand, it shouldn´t be too difficult to wrap the plugin into an Apache module.

I'm very interesting by your streaming script...
I'm trying to stream some different video file format to the iphone using ffmpeg.
my "movprovider.php" script transcode in realtime my video and send a mpeg4 stream.

Here, the interesting parts of my script :
--
header("Content-type: video/quicktime");

$cmd = getcwd().'\ffmpeg.exe -i "'.$name.'" -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -ac 2 -s 480x360 -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 350k -flags +aic+mv4+trell -mbd 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -g 250 -maxrate 512k -bufsize 2M -title "Video" -';

$header = pack('Nc8Nc4NNc4',
20, ord('f'), ord('t'), ord('y'), ord('p'), ord('i'), ord('s'), ord('o'), ord('m'), 512, ord('m'), ord('p'), ord('4'), ord('1'), // ftpy header (20Bytes)
0, 0, ord('m'), ord('d'), ord('a'), ord('t'));

echo $header;
echo myExecuteCmd($cmd);
--

But it doesn't work. quicktime waits the video is completely received before playing :(

what about new additions to actionscript 3. all these amf, byte array, socket classes. it must be possible to binarize streaming h264 in some way?

Hi JeroenW,

Any update on your "quick burst" method for h264 files? Most of our files are over 200mb and as such scrubbing back and forth takes a few seconds. I would preferably prefer to keep my lighttpd bandwidth to about 200kb per sec but since we need that burst i have to keep it at 800kb to keep things resonably quick. I was wondering if you know of some modification to make to the mod_h264_streaming file etc?

Thanks!

Ric

Hi Ricx,

I'm curious as well along what lines JeroenW is thinking to enable quick-burst. If I would have to take a stab at it I'd look at the lighttpd TrafficShaping feature (connection.kbytes-per-second). You could add a 'burst' option (in seconds) to that so after every seek you'd have 'unlimited' throughput for a few seconds and then drop to the value specified in kbytes-per-second.

Perhaps you could file a request in the Lighttpd forum?

Hi Arjen,

Perhaps there is some kind of iptables rule that can be used also? For example we could allow whatever port lighttpd runs on to be traffic shaped by iptables and have some "burst" rule? Im pretty sure iptables could be configured to do traffic shaping for services but im wondering if it has a sort of "burst" feature or can be manipulated by some sort of script to acomplish the desired result? Will have a look into that tomorrow and see what i can come up with... unless someone on here knows iptables very well and know if this is achievable?

Thanks

Ric

So I can get the player to play the H.264 file while in single media, but it doesn't work from the playlist. Any ideas...or did you address this already?

Hai
Is There Any Tool/software Like qt-faststart.c that can shift Moov From back side to front side of video?

Thanks

Hi guys.

To be on-topic, the only way we can stream large files encoded in h264 with JW player is to:

1. either use another format for the atoms, with only the data the player needs

OR

2. compress the atoms on the server side and decompress on the client side in JW player.

I takes 10 - 16 seconds (size of file: approx 500 Meg) for it to start streaming (6 mbit connection) after seeking. (and of course when you load the video).

Any solution?

Hi Arjen!

I finally set up my lighttpd server with mod_h264_streaming - and all I can say is, it's working well

i have a question,

1. i known mod_h264_streaming.c can be use like url = "http://h264.code-shop.com:8080/trailer2.mp4?start=45.5&end=60" , and start&end are time seek,, but if we can use start&end for file seek
just like mod_flv_streaming.c,

2. would you support me, how i can get the mp4 file's total time in mod_h264_streaming.c

So thanks a lot guys for your great work!!

Email:bychyahoo@gmail.com

Thanks

tommy

Hi Flo

I have a issue same with you.Have you success in live streaming h264? can you give me a demo or a idea.

Best Regards

-Kim

Hi,
adobe release the flv and f4v file specification.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/pdf/video_file_format_spec_v9.pdf

i wonder now that the the spec clearly describe h.264 + aac in flv file format how can use that for
pseudo streaming ?
is the mod_flv_streaming will work now ?
is that means we dont need to parse and chnage atoms anymore ?
Thansk.

hi everyone,

i am new to jwplayer , i need to play the same format mp4 file in jw player as http://h264.code-shop.com:8080/trailer2.mp4. i only see that file is being loaded , but it is never start playing even after 100% , can you give me code how to play this file. I have fully installed lighttpd + mod_264_streamer.

I can successfully player proper mp4 files, but i don't know how to send fake mp4 header. I don't need any seekbar. just need to play the file.

your support is highly appreciated.

Hey Arjen,

Nice job on the plugin, this looks great.

I'd like to extend it a bit to add the functionality that tommy mentioned. Specifically the &end=time parameter. This would allow a small snippet of a movie to be viewed.

The motivation behind this is to allow flash to stop loading the clip at a certain point by pretending that it's the end of the file.

I have been reviewing your plugin and I can see how I would read in this value, but I am having trouble determining where you are reading the actual file. I see where you read in the atoms around line 370-400 in mod_h264_streaming.c, and where you copy in the movie data on line 424.

It looks like I would have to change moov_atom.size_ to be equal to the byteposition in the moov corresponding to the time passed in. This is where I get stuck. How should I do this conversion?

Any help would be appreciated.

-Nick

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the feedback.

The latest version of the plugin (for lighttpd 1.5.0, not on the WIKI yet), but you can find it here:

http://h264.code-shop.com/svn/h264/trunk/lighttpd-1.5.0/

supports both a start and end time parameter (in seconds).

Hope this helps,

Arjen

Fantastic. I had checked out the 1.4.18 version and didn't notice it in there. Sorry should have looked at the latest!

Thanks again for your hard work.
-Nick

Dear forum experts,

Hi, great work on all this!

I am trying to duplicate the demo environment which is at http://h264.code-shop.com:8080/longtail_player.html. Before making some mods of my own to the plugin, i figure i should get the basic demo operational at my own site :)

But, I have am having some trouble. I'm sure i'm being a bonehead. Could someone verify my setup?

I have the following setup at my server:

* lighttpd 1.5.1 with plugin, via svn link above

* configured lighttpd per instructions at wiki

* i downloaded all of the following files via wget into a dir hosted by lighttpd
**longtail_player.swf
**longtail_player.html
**trailer2.mp4
**AC_RunActiveContent.js

Unfortunately, when I browse to the html page in Safari, the flash player box does not show up, and therefore the movie does not play.

Am I missing a file, or configuration step?

Thanx, in advance....

Many people have brought up the idea of compressing the moov atom, and I am curious.

- Can flash 9 handle an h.264 file with compressed headers?
- If so, all that needs to be done is to add compression (and optionally decompression) to mod_h264_streaming?

Thanks,
Mark

Hi Mark,

Adding the actual zlib compression isn't the hard part. :) The hard part is the fact that the atom contains absolute file positions (from the start of the file, and not relative to the 'mdat' atom).

So once you compress the moov atom, the actual offsets stored in the moov atom change. :(

What you could do is:

compress the moov atom.
remember the size of the compressed atom and add a few percent overhead.
repatch all the offsets in the moov atom
compress the moov atom (again)
add padding between the moov and mdat atom.

You could say that storing absolute offsets in a moov atom was a slight oversight in the spec. :)

Regards,

Arjen

OK,
Let's say I can't install lighttpd on my server because I use a free space provided by my ISP.
Is there anyway I could do pseudo-streaming like it's possible to do you with flv files ? Any way as simple as installing a php script and encoding the mp4 with metadata ?

Thanks

I have this set up and it works great with files encoded in Nero Recode.

I am having trouble getting files to play properly that are encoded with Handbrake. This is the best tool I've found for encoding DVD media to h.264. Its free,open source, and produces better quality video and runs on Linux with a CLI so I can script the import on my web server.

The idea here is to be able to pop in a DVD and have a script that will convert and upload to the file server. My web server has a the file server mounted.

The files play fine when served from Apache or Lighttpd without the mod. I would think this has something to do with the way the mod rebuilds the metadata in the mp4.

I've compared the files with gspot and the only difference I can find is the framerate. Does your mod need a specific framerate. I wouldn't think so.

The videos start playing but the video is fast and choppy and completely out of sync with the audio. The audio sounds fine.

Does anyone know what may be causing this or how to debug? Thanks.

Hi, ajren !
Can you provide user/password to access http://h264.code-shop.com/svn/h264/trunk/lighttpd-1.5.0/
Thanks.

@Mark, @Arjen: We did a fair bit of testing with compression of headers, but Flash doesn't seem to understand that (we always get unsupportedFormat errors). This is an issue since headers can be hundreds of kb for large videos.

What we did was return to a H264-in-FLV solution. So the H264 stream is muxed into an FLV file. It's nasty, because MP4 files have to be remuxed (not recoded, fortunately!), but it does get rid of the large headers.

Perhaps anybody tried and got other solutions working?

@Jeroen,

I can mux H.264 into FLV using ffmpeg and it plays using HTTP progressive & PHP streamscript, but not RTMP using Red5.

Did the files that you muxed to FLV work on RTMP and if so, how did you do it?

I used:ffmpeg -i filename.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy filename.flvffmpeg-r13712

No, they didn't work on RTMP. But both Wowza and FMS have native MP4 playback. I suppose Red5 will get that soon, so FLV-muxing isn't needed for RTMP.

@Jeroen,

The metadata from Red5 says there is only audio in the FLV, although it's about the same size as the original MP4, so I'm guessing the video is in there, just can't be found by Red5.

Red5 v0.7.1 (due soon, I hope) is supposed to have MP4.

Ok, I managed to get a pretty good encoding method working. I used a program called MeGUI. It is basically a graphical front end to many applications available for encoding h264 video like x264 and Nero AAC Audio encoding. So far all of the MP4s I've made work perfectly with the mod. I used it for DVD but it can encode from many source formats.

Its kinda a pain to use but gives the best quality I've found and its free. : )

hi just new here

well i like to know the best converter from wmv to flv usinf the h264, i did upload some videos hd to vimeo and the quality is realy good, so i try to convert my wmv to flv but find that is good but not the same quality in full screen. any jelp is apreciated, tks

@Jeroen,kLink

I remuxed an MP4 (h264/aac) to an flv using the latest ffmpeg version too.
No problem with HTTP progressive but I can't stream it using lighttpd... jumping around in the timeline doesn't work.

does it work for you?

@Stefan,

Seems like FLVMDI, flvtool2, or yamdi can't find the video stream or don't recognize the codec and can't find the keyframes.

I couldn't stream with RTMP, or "fake" stream with HTTP and couldn't scrub.

Yes indeed! I've filed a request with the developer of yamdi to enable the duration/width/height extraction if H264-flv files. Perhaps if you file a request too he'll jump into it faster!

http://yamdi.sourceforge.net/

After all that trouble managing x264/aac into the mpeg-4 container for streaming using gop ;-) my vids are streaming fine with a handmade php streaming-script in almost all browsers. But somehow they are jerky in ie6 and ie7 with increasing bitrates. i've realized this issue with Versions 3.16 and 4.0... and - by the way - without streaming - playing them static - one can see the same effects too.

-- too bad )-;

Is this a MSIE-Issue only?

Hey Herbert, share your code!

Hi Guys,

all you guys have been trying to do pseudo streaming with mp4(3gp) file,if so can we access the frames from the back end & if so can we do dynamic insertion.will the file play with any player which is capable of decoding 3GP file. Is there a way we can parse an XML which can have a entry to a separate media file. All and any help on this would be highly appreciated please let me know.

http://www.designkuwait.com

Has anyone implemented this in php yet?

I have started looking into this, I don't know what atoms need to be pushed back out once a skip has happen.

Hi,

Is there anyone who has managed to get streaming of the h.264 packed in a FLV container to work?

I encoded a test video (about 60seconds long) using the following ffmpeg command line:

ffmpeg -i test.wmv -f flv -vcodec libx264 -an test.flv (ffmpeg release r15321)

then added metadata using flvtool2 (version 1.0.6). It inserts about 60 keyframe positions and they are visible when checked with a -P argument.

Video plays back correctly with JW Player 4.1.60, but when I enable streaming, it does not work. When I try to jump to some location on the timeline which has not been downloaded yet, player shows loading icon for a while, and then just stops doing anything. I checked from the server logs that the player does not even try to open the url with another start= position.

I am using php xmoov pseudostreaming script on the server side. When i use older FLV videos (no h264 inside), everything, including streaming works perfectly.

So, if anyone has successfully created a FLV-container with h264 and streams it perfectly with the xmoov php script, please let me know :-)

 
flvtool2 definitely puts the time/position metadata into the FLV container, but it must be slightly wrong, because when I try to scrub, all I get is:

Startup and/or seek delay of large files is really an issue for now.

Is there any update or progress on smaller or compressed atoms for h.264 mp4?

Or seekable h.264 in FLV?

Hi

I read you moov.c.
I think there is a bug in "stts_get_samples" function. If the entries is not all the same, the pts maybe wrong.
This is my code :D

// calc pts:
{
void const* stts = trak->mdia_.minf_.stbl_.stts_;
unsigned int s = 0;
unsigned int entries = stts_get_entries(stts);
unsigned int j;
unsigned int pts = 0;
for(j = 0; j < entries; j++)
{
unsigned int i;
unsigned int sample_count;
unsigned int sample_duration;
stts_get_sample_count_and_duration(stts, j,
&sample_count, &sample_duration);
for(i = 0; i < sample_count; i++)
{
trak->samples_[s].pts_ = pts;
++s;
pts += sample_duration;
}
}
}

I have the h264-streaming up and running (1.4.18) and it works great with files created with ffmpeg. Files coming out of our Telestream Episode Engine on the other hand does not work. These mp4's work great with normal progressive download in a flash player (starts playing right away), but not though the h264-streaming mod. Here's an example file if someone can help: http://129.177.28.230/video/bakom.mp4 (that's on lighttpd with the mod).

Hi Kurt, Hi Dylan,

Just to keep you posted. I'll have a look at both issues shortly. Thanks for the report!

Regards,

Arjen

I also have a similar problem to Kurt but my files were created with mp4creator (part of mpeg4ip).

Two things.

1) IIRC my tests with h.264 in FLV + http scrubbing worked OK. Maybe I had to use an old version of flvplayer? See
http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?thread=13751#msg92489

2) Interesting that youtube is now formally offering their "HD" videos. See

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p27cLysfqYc

That's 180MB of 1280x720 @ 2mbps h.264 in mp4 if you click on "watch in HD." And they do scrubbing, so I suppose its the fix-the-moov-atom-on-the-fly stuff (though they allow scrubbing to non-keyframes and show garbled pixels until a keyframe is reached). Also notable that the "normal" quality version is h.264 in FLV. (!) Wonder why they're bothering with h.264 in mp4?

Hi all!
I've tried php streaming with mp4-in-flv but without success. I've tried JW Player 4.2 and self cooked video (with ffmpeg) and also tried to php stream video from http://tubecup.com (they have there working streaming with mp4 in flv). And I got only progresive playback without any search possible.
Does somebody know the clue how to get it working? Pls help.

Hi all!

may be this on line video

http://hd.tudou.com/program/13899/

show some idea about questions on live streaming of h.264 in a FLV container.

my Email:bychyahoo@gmail.com

Hi all,

Just to keep you updated. There is now a version 2 available of the mod_h264_streaming plugin and this version also includes modules for Lighttpd, Apache and Ngingx.

See the mainpage http://h264.code-shop.com for more info.

Regards,

P.S. I've tried H264 in a FLV container as well, but didn't get it to work. If anyone can point me to a *working example* that would be much appreciated.

@Arjen

Here is an H264 in FLV. I have to look again, but as I claimed above, I thought I had it working in a version 3 instance of the player. Perhaps the v3 player is more tolerant of bad keyframe offset values (or I have a bad memory)? I notice that the keyframe data added into a h264 in FLV by flvtool2 seems to be bad, as judged by the fact that a scrubbed response from lighttpd+mod_h264_streaming is not liked by mediainfo nor mplayer. Google (youtube) seems to have it all worked out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqKZbJA4eiM&fmt=35

[/tmp] mediainfo FlashMQ9L8Q
General
Complete name : FlashMQ9L8Q
Format : Flash Video
File size : 8.61 MiB
Duration : 1mn 17s
Overall bit rate : 936 Kbps
starttime : 0.000
totalduration : 77.200
totaldatarate : 931.377
bytelength : 9031846.000
canseekontime : Yes
sourcedata : B4A7DD128

Video
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L2.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@2.1
Duration : 1mn 17s
Bit rate : 802 Kbps
Width : 480 pixels
Height : 360 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4/3
Frame rate : 30.013 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.155

Audio
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 4
Format profile : LC
Format settings, SBR : No
Duration : 1mn 17s
Bit rate : 124 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits

hi guys,

i'm running a nas dns-323 with lighttpd.1.4.19 and compiling the mod_h264_streaming.so module is WAY beyond me.

newbie question:
is there a link to a compiled mod_h264_streaming.so file that i could download, add it to my .conf fle and the simply restart lighttpd?

would that even work?

any and all help much appreciated,
chris

Hey Chris,

I've been messing around with the same problem for 2 nights now. Only thing to get this working under Windows is to simply download the lighttpd from saltwater (http://saltwaterc.net/lighttpd). Mess with some settings and it will definitly work!

Good luck!

So,
Has anybody gotten a semi-working php only solution setup? I'd be veeeeeeeeewry interested!

Sam

i'm also very interested in such a solution.

what's happening at this topic?

UP!!!

Still waiting on that PHP Solution to Fake the Metadata / Moov Atom at the beginning of the MP4 to get her streaming.

Any news on this? Im so interested in get this working... =|

i am interested to see the solutions. its taking hale lot of matters out of me. I have used FLVPlayback Component for my video player.