boxtream
Boxtream is both an audio and video encoder and streamer and an assembly of audio and video hardware, forming a mobile video streaming studio. It is designed to easily record and stream live presentations, including a presenter and synchronized slides, or slides only, or presenter only. It was built to stream live courses over the Internet for distance learning students. It supports and autodetects several brands and models of video switchers. It can be entirely controlled remotely over XML-RPC, and includes an X11 interface. By default, it supports five different streaming and recording scenarios. The software part can also be used with very minimal hardware, like a DV camcorder and a laptop.
| Tags | Communications Conferencing Desktop Environment tools multimedia Sound/Audio Capture/Recording Video Capture |
|---|---|
| Licenses | GPL |
| Operating Systems | POSIX Linux |
| Implementation | Python |
| Translations | English French |
Recent releases
- 20 Nov 2008 21:46
Changes: For the very first time, three basic scenarios have been added for people with minimalistic hardware like a single USB Webcam or mini-DV camcorder, so finally Boxtream can be used by everybody. An example script to start both the backend and the frontend on the local machine has been added to further simplify use. Axis Webcams are now handled with the souphttpsrc GStreamer plugin. Minor bugs were fixed all over the place. A small French presentation of the project's history was added to the distribution in the OpenDocument format.
- 27 Apr 2008 06:14
Changes: Basic support for Kramer video switchers was added. An A/V sync problem in the default hardware configuration was fixed. Graphviz dot files are generated automatically from the running GStreamer pipeline. The package now includes the schema of the general hardware architecture. Lots of small bugfixes and improvements were done all over the place. Licensing terms were changed to GNU GPL 3.0 or later. Be aware that you must delete the existing version before installing this one, since the streaming scenarios have been renamed.
- 29 May 2007 11:06
Changes: This is the first release that fully supports custom made scenarios, and this feature is now documented on the Web site with an example. The handling of command line options is now smarter. Multithreading support was improved, and now streaming pipelines are correctly stopped. A lot of minor bugs were fixed all over the place. The Web site contains real world examples of what is usually done with this project, as a three hour streaming session cut into 14 parts.
- 02 May 2007 05:21
Changes: This is the first release where the minimal hardware requirement is a single firewire device (e.g. a simple camcorder), making third party uses and contributions possible even from people without expensive hardware. A problem which prevented audio-only streaming was fixed. Users can now easily create their own streaming and recording scenarios. Basic support for Axis 24XX cameras servers as switcher's inputs controllers is included, but currently not documented. The video balance now only controls one side when a two-sides scenario is used.
- 24 Apr 2007 11:04
Changes: The encoder can now generate a Python source program which can record a different event at a later date while using the very same scenario. For example, switching between inputs or adding and removing text overlays will be done at exactly the same time, and the type of recording, the video balance values, and so on will be exactly the same as they were during the recording of the original event. The generated program is a headless XML-RPC client to the encoder, which defaults to talking to the encoder running on localhost, but which can also talk to a remote encoder. Minor bugs were fixed.
