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This short HOWTO hopes to give the internaut some guidelines on how to connect to audio and video streams based on free software (or in the case of QuickTime, open source) principles, whether they find themselves in front of a Mac or PC running Mac OS X, Mac OS Classic, Linux, FreeBSD or Windows. The main aim is to encourage the use of free software / open source platforms for audio and video streaming as a move away from certain 'closed' platforms that shall not be mentioned here. The secondary aim is to encourage Internet broadcasters (intercasters) to try to support all users, regardless of their own personal OS preferences and to remember that not everyone has ADSL or cable connexions to the internet.
My personal recommendation when streaming and considering streaming video is to try to also provide a low-bandwidth audio alternative for those who are connecting via modem or cannot manage to get their video player to either work or connect to the stream successfully. I say always consider doing audio and not video, the results are often more effective, the server power and bandwidth you'll need will be less, and the large majority of internauts will be able to connect without too much trouble.
Anyway, on with the list of contents:
QuickTime is Apple's platform for video production, reproduction and broadcast. It is a suite comprising of four applications: QT Player - to reproduce video and audio files and streams, QT Broadcaster - to send streams to a server, QT Streaming Server - to receive and broadcast streams and QT Pro - to author QT video files. The first three are all available for free and this therefore makes it a good platform for streaming. We use Apple's Open Source version of QT Streaming server on Debian GNU/Linux: Darwin Streaming Server.
The main drawback of QuickTime for us is that Apple does not currently produce a version of their player for Linux, nor a version of their browser plug-in for Linux web browsers - to say nothing of the BSD variants. There are instructions below on how you might achieve reproducing QuickTime on Linux below. You can always contact Apple and let them know how much you'd like a player for Linux.
Note: to watch and listen to these streams, we always recommend you have the latest version of QT Player available. We use MPEG-4 encoding for our streams as it offers very good compression, but it's relatively new and therefore you'll need version 6.x of the player or later.
As one might have guessed, there should be no problem connecting to QuickTime streams with a Machintosh - both OS 8/9 and X. The player should come pre-installed with your computer, but if you don't have it or have an older version, you can download it from Apple's web site. On Mac OS X we've tested the plug-in with most of the browsers available and it works with all.
As an alternative to QT Player, try VideoLAN Client. One benefit is that it displays output in full screen, which you can only get with QT Player by registering it as the Pro version and paying them cash (or obtaining someone else's registration code, but obviously we don't recommend doing that! ;)). Another good alternative is MPlayer.
Again, like for the Mac, there should be no problem connecting to QuickTime streams with Windows as Apple make a player and plug-in for this platform. Note that Windows rarely comes with QuickTime pre-installed, so you'll have to download it from Apple's web site. On Windows we've tested the plug-in with most of the browsers available and it works with all.
Again, like the Mac, VideoLAN Client makes for a good alternative to Apple's player.
As mentioned above, Apple helpfully doesn't provide any client application for Linux, which is slightly daft seeing as they do provide a version of their streaming server for Linux. Only time will tell if they see fit to do so, we hope they do.
There are several applications for Linux which should in theory work to reproduce live QuickTime streams and so far we have found the best option to be MPlayer.
To make MPlayer work with QuickTime streams, you need to have the LIVE.com video library installed and also download and install the MPlayer and the audio and video codec packages, you should refer to the respective web sites of these applications for more information. There is some good help on this at LIVE.com's web site.
Once you're ready, try connecting to this test stream from our server using the command:mplayer -fps 5 -rtsp-stream-over-tcp rtsp://media1.fadaiat.net:554/fadaiat.sdp
You should get audio and video playback. Note in the above command the -rtsp-stream-over-tcp parameter is crucial if you want it to work correct. You may also like to add the -fs parameter to see it full screen.
Additionally, depending on the Codecs used, other programmes may or may not work. Some have reported success with VideoLAN Client, Xine and MPEG4IP, but MPlayer is probably your best bet as it uses a Windows binary-compatability layer to use native, supported libraries.
For your web browser, there is an MPlayer browser plug-in for Mozilla, which should also work with the Firefox browser. Remember that if you can't see the stream using MPlayer stand-alone, then you're not going to see it with the plug-in as it uses the same libraries.
Lastly, if you fancy forking out some money, there's also CodeWeavers' CrossOver Plugin, which allows you to run native Windows plug-ins in your browser, including the QuickTime plug-in.
We'd be interested in your feedback on how you get on with QuickTime and Linux, so that we can improve these instructions. Please email wireless_at_psand_dot_net with any information or comments you have. Thanks.
The programmes ffmpeg and ffserver are the client and server parts of the ffmpeg streaming software. It's a simple piece of software that in theory allows streaming in a myriad of formats, including RealVideo and Microsoft Windows Media, however we have not had a great deal of success with these formats and use what we have found to be the most realiable format, which is MPEG2.
To our knowledge, if you're on Mac OS 8 or 9 (Classic), you're not going to be watching an Ffmpeg stream anytime soon and you should content yourself with a QuickTime stream instead. If you're on OS X however, you're in luck because the version of MPlayer for Mac OS X works very well and you should be able to watch video and listen to audio perfectly. As an alternative you could try VideoLAN Client.
In theory both VideoLAN Client and MPlayer should be able to connect to and reproduce Ffmpeg streams under Windows, although we have had inconsistent results. Probably the best results so far have been with MPlayer, which seems to need to run under the command line. So install MPlayer, open up a DOS prompt, change to the directory of the unzipped MPlayer install and type:mplayer -fps 5 http://media1.fadaiat.net:8090/fadaiat.mpg
Like for Windows above, in theory both VideoLAN Client and MPlayer should be able to connect to and reproduce Ffmpeg streams under the various Unix strains, but again we've experienced spurious results with this. You're best bet seems to be Xine.
Audio only streams are an awful lot simpler than video ones and normally you won't encounter many problems when connecting to one. You'll simply need to download one of the following clients for your platform:
Once you have an audio player installed you will need to point it at the stream you wish to listen to. Do this by using "open URL", "play location", "open sequence" or "open web location" or using the address bar if it has one. You will need to provide it with a full URL, for example http://live1.radiovague.com:554/bgg03.
The Ogg Vorbis open, free audio platform is one that is better with compression than MP3 and more importantly is completely open source software, allowing for licence-free use and development of Ogg Vorbis based tools. All well and good I hear you say? Well yes, but there is a draw-back: not all clients, especially the more commerical ones support Ogg. Here's a list of ones who do. A general note, the author has personally had most sucess with VLC when connecting to Ogg audio streams on all platforms.:
Once you have an audio player installed you will need to point it at the stream you wish to listen to. Do this by using "open URL", "play location", "open sequence" or "open web location" or using the address bar if it has one. You will need to provide it with a full URL, for example http://live1.radiovague.com:8000/lafloresta.ogg.
You can also visit the Icecast server's status page and click on the link for the stream that you wish to listen to. Our Icecast servers are to be found at:
This will open an .m3u file, which contains meta information about the stream. One problem you may experience is that it opens your default player, which may not support Ogg Vorbis. So you may have to drag the link onto the player that you do wish to use. If in doubt, use the manual method described above.
Article copyright (c) 2004 Radio Vague. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".