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A
argroth
Participant
July 7, 2009
Answered

Synchronous live streams

  • July 7, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 860 views

Wondering if FMS 3.5 is capable of turning multiple live streams from web cams into a single stream to go out to client machines?  Not interested in concatenating the stream, but rather overlapping them.

If this is not available through FMS 3.5, are there other tools available by which this could be achieved programmatically?

Thanks.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer techeye

    I would work backward in this case.  Take for instance a home DSL connection with 1.5 Mbps down.  Now given that constraint, you would need to aggregate 5 webcam streams over it.  This will compromise the bitrate of the content (ie visual quality) as each stream would take up less than 300 kbps as one would need to account for TCP overhead.   This means that the webcams need to encode the content to meet these requirements.

    Now by doing so, you have 5 separate streams coming from the webcam, which you now want to turn into a "single one".   You can multiplex these 5 streams over a single netconnection (or 5 streams over 5 different netconnections), but the network footprint will not be any smaller because those streams have been encoded at that bitrate.

    So the moral of the story is:  find a good encoder.

    1 reply

    T
    techeye
    Participating Frequently
    July 8, 2009

    I don't know exactly what you mean by "overlapping" streams but, there is the ability to multiplex multiple (live) NetStreams over a single NetConnection if that is what you are asking.

    A
    argrothAuthor
    Participant
    July 8, 2009

    Well, I'm hoping to keep the bandwidth requirements down on the client side.  Even if I have just one NetConnection, if there are 5 streams over it, that's still going to be pretty bandwidth intensive, right?  By turning all 5 streams into a single one, I'm thinking that the footprint would be smaller.  Maybe my logic is off...

    T
    techeyeCorrect answer
    Participating Frequently
    July 8, 2009

    I would work backward in this case.  Take for instance a home DSL connection with 1.5 Mbps down.  Now given that constraint, you would need to aggregate 5 webcam streams over it.  This will compromise the bitrate of the content (ie visual quality) as each stream would take up less than 300 kbps as one would need to account for TCP overhead.   This means that the webcams need to encode the content to meet these requirements.

    Now by doing so, you have 5 separate streams coming from the webcam, which you now want to turn into a "single one".   You can multiplex these 5 streams over a single netconnection (or 5 streams over 5 different netconnections), but the network footprint will not be any smaller because those streams have been encoded at that bitrate.

    So the moral of the story is:  find a good encoder.

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