DependenciesMCN Streaming is in fact a GStreamer application. Thus, in order to build and use MCN streaming, you need to have GStreamer and its modules installed first. Most, if not all, Linux distributions provide packages of GStreamer. You should find these in your distribution's package repository. Below is a list of all GStreamer modules that are necessary to run MCN Streaming. - GStreamer: core library and elements.
- gst-plugins-base: an essential exemplary set of elements.
- gst-plugins: additional elements.
- gst-ffmpeg: FFmpeg-based plug-in.
- gst-plugins-good: a set of good-quality plug-ins under LGPL license.
- gst-plugins-bad: a set of plug-ins that need more quality.
- gst-plugins-ugly: a set of good-quality plug-ins that might pose distribution problems,
If any of the components is not included in your Linux distribution, you can always download the source codes and build it.Build and InstallMCN Streaming software package uses GNU Autoconf and Automake tools. Once you download the source codes, you can build and install MCN Streaming in the usual "./configure", "make", and "sudo make install" way.
Once you successfully build and install MCN Streaming, you shall get two binaries: mcn_sender and mcn_receiver, which is the video encoder/sender and receiver/decoder, respectively.
MCN Streaming is very flexible in terms of selecting encoding and transmitting parameters. These parameters can be specfied from command line options, in case you wish to override the default values. To get a complete list of the sender options, type "mcn_sender --help-sender" in the terminal. To get a complete list of the receiver options, type "mcn_receiver--help-receiver" in the terminal.
Sender and Receiver Example
Here we give simple examples that show how to use MCN Streaming to send and receive real-time video.
In one terminal, type following command:
- mcn_sender -s videotestsrc -e x264enc -f 20 -w 352 -h 288 -b 300
This command indicates to encode a GStreamer test video source into an H.264 bitstream at a frame rate of 20 fps. The video resolution is 352x288 and the bit-rate is 300kbps. The encoded raw video bitstream will be further encoded into corresponding RTP packets and sent to the receiver. Note that RTCP packets are also sent to receiver.
The default receiver is localhost. So we can type following command at another terminal to receive the video.
- mcn_receiver -d ffdec_h264
The "-d" option tells the receiver to use an H.264 decoder to decode the incoming stream. The receiver also sends RTCP packets to the sender.
If MCN Streaming has been successfully installed, you shall be able to see a display window showing the decoded video. Meanwhile, the sender parses the RTCP packets sent by the receiver and prints out relevant information, e.g., jitter and packet loss rate.
MCN Streaming is very flexible and the above commands only show a simple example. You can choose to encode video captured by a webcam. You can also specify the frame-rate, bit-rate, video encoding format, receiver IP address, port number for RTP/RTCP packets. All these parameters can be controlled from command line options.
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