JMF and RTSP

Well, Rick Proctor got me interested in Java-based streaming media servers using the Java Media Framework (JMF). I'm not much of a developer, but I can search the web like nobody's business! The first useful information I found pointed to JStreamer by Abdul Basit. Looks like MP3-only, but it was developed in JMF.

(Update: According to this 2003 O'Reilly blog posting by Chris Adamson, it looks like MP3 support was later removed from JMF.)

The next lead was J-Motion, registered at SourceForge in 2001 by Maarten Mijnhardt. Unfortunately, there are no files available. Maarten Mijnhardt also posted in 2001 to the JMF-Interest mailing list (for example, see here). I note from his email address that he's posting from the rug.ac.be domain, which happens to be the University at Ghent. A quick search there turns up nothing. A dead-end...

In the JMF Java Forum, I found a thread entitled "Is it possible to develop a RTSP server by using JMF?" I guess the answer is "maybe." However, the third reply offers a comparison between JMF and OpenRTSP from Live.com (thus completing a circle with my previous post). Clicking on the author's name, SebFalquier, displays some other threads describing his particular troubles with RTSP and JMF.

One of the other replies points to another SourceForge project, an RTSP-based VOD streaming server implemented with JMF. Some code is available there, although I don't know if the project is still active or not.

I had commented on Rick's blog that JMF 2.1.1 has RTSP support, citing this page. At the bottom of that page, it lists 2 "standards based RTSP/RTP servers." One is the Quicktime Streaming server, while the second is Sun's StorEdge Media Central Streaming Server. This product was announced in 2000. The user guide may be found here.

Now, here's another interesting wrinkle. In this 2004 article by Pramod Jain and Yayati Kasralikar, two Java applets are used to create the simulation of streaming. One applet does the capture, say, from a webcam and uploads the video file in carefully measured bits to a server. The second applet is a player, which retrieves said file from said server. Fooling around with the file size and the lag time produces a formula for producing something that looks like continuous streaming. Source code is also available. An interesting exercise, to be sure!

Comments

[Screened Twenty]

Hey,

Some quick link, hoping to help someone out there by saving them time. The following link is a bit of common configuration code on how to use JMF for RTP servers:

http://coderslog.com/RTP_Server_Using_JMF

[Rick]

I played with the code you mentioned. It's interesting but not what I was looking for. Apple has an open source streaming server called darwin found at: http://developer.apple.com/darwin/.