Live555 Streaming Media and Android setup

I will explain here how to setup Live555, how to start Live555 server and play media file using Android VLC client.

What is Live555?

The “LIVE555 Media Server” is a complete RTSP server application. It can stream several kinds of media file (which must be stored in the current working directory.- i.e., the directory from which you launch the application — or a subdirectory.)

• A MPEG Transport Stream file (with file name suffix “.ts”)
• A Matroska or WebM file (with filename suffix “.mkv” or “.webm”)
• An Ogg file (with filename suffix “.ogg”, “ogv”, or “.opus”)
• A MPEG-1 or 2 Program Stream file (with file name suffix “.mpg”)
• A MPEG-4 Video Elementary Stream file (with file name suffix “.m4e”)
• A H.264 Video Elementary Stream file (with file name suffix “.264”)
• A H.265 Video Elementary Stream file (with file name suffix “.265”)
• A VOB video+audio file (with file name suffix “.vob”)
• A DV video file (with file name suffix “.dv”)
• A MPEG-1 or 2 (including layer III — i.e., ‘MP3’) audio file (with file name suffix “.mp3”)
• A WAV (PCM) audio file (with file name suffix “.wav”)
• An AMR audio file (with file name suffix “.amr”)
• An AC-3 audio file (with file name suffix “.ac3”)
• An AAC (ADTS format) audio file (with file name suffix “.aac”)

System Requirement:

1. Live555 setup can be installed on Linux and MacOS
2. System should have gcc installed
3. Ensure you have appropriate compiler to build Live555 code.

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

Downloads

1. Download Live555 Media server from http://www.live555.com/mediaServer/#downloading link
2. Download Live555 source code from http://www.live555.com/liveMedia/public/
3. Copy above 2 download at some directory

Setup Steps

1. Go to directory where you have copied all downloads.
2. Run command from terminal $ tar xvf live555-latest.tar.gz to extract source code
3. Change directory $ cd live
4. Run command $ ./genMakefiles linux
5. Run command $ make

Now live555 build is ready to run.

Start Live Server

1. Go to director where you have coped live555MediaServer file
2. Run command from terminal ./live555MediaServer

You can see above screen shot have RTSP stream details like “rtsp://<IP addresss>:<port>/<File you want play>”.

Now close this server and copy some video/audio media file as per supported format into live555MediaServer directory.

Again Run command from terminal ./live555MediaServer to start server

Now media file is available for stream.

Test Stream using VLC player

1. Open VLC player
2. Menu -> Media -> Open Network Stream

3. Press Play button.

Android Integration

1. Add internet permission inside manifest file
2. Add Gradle dependencies as “implementation ‘org.videolan.android:libvlc-all:3.4.4'”
3. Create a layout file as below,

?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".ui.player.MediaPlayer">

    <org.videolan.libvlc.util.VLCVideoLayout
        android:id="@+id/videoLayout"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent" />

</RelativeLayout>

4. Create Activity class file as below,

import android.net.Uri
import android.os.Bundle
import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity
import com.nabtopoc.R
import org.videolan.libvlc.LibVLC
import org.videolan.libvlc.Media
import org.videolan.libvlc.MediaPlayer
import org.videolan.libvlc.util.VLCVideoLayout

class MediaPlayer : AppCompatActivity() {

    companion object {

        private const val USE_TEXTURE_VIEW = false
        private const val ENABLE_SUBTITLES = true
        private const val URI = "rtsp://<Server IP:port>/test.264"
    }
    private lateinit var libVlc: LibVLC
    private lateinit var mediaPlayer: MediaPlayer
    private lateinit var videoLayout: VLCVideoLayout

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_media_player)

        libVlc = LibVLC(this, ArrayList<String>().apply {
            add("--no-drop-late-frames")
            add("--no-skip-frames")
            add("--rtsp-tcp")
            add("-vvv")
        })
        mediaPlayer = MediaPlayer(libVlc)

        videoLayout = findViewById(R.id.videoLayout)
    }

    override fun onStart() {
        super.onStart()

        mediaPlayer.attachViews(videoLayout, null, false, false)

        val media = Media(libVlc, Uri.parse(URI))
        media.setHWDecoderEnabled(true, false)
        media.addOption(":network-caching=600")

        mediaPlayer.media = media
        media.release()
        mediaPlayer.play()
    }

    override fun onStop() {
        super.onStop()

        mediaPlayer.stop()
        mediaPlayer.detachViews()
    }

    override fun onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy()

        mediaPlayer.release()
        libVlc.release()
    }
}