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by cardiffspaceman 1613 days ago
But isn't MJPEG a decent protocol for streaming to browsers? The browser handles MJPEG streams as the URL. It also handles the URL for a stream from Motion as the SRC element of an IMG element.

MPEGTS would be great for things I have wanted to do in the past, and all you probably have to do is hack the video element so it can handle that.

I think the thing about MJPEG and webcams is that it's relatively easy to make MJPEG from a webcam. MPEGTS would require more code I think?
2 comments
nola-a 1612 days ago
Mjpeg over Http is not a live streaming format, it takes a lot of bandwidth, it has high latency, it run on TCP which it is not a protocol for streaming, the only advantage is that all browsers support it.

So (i) if you want a solution that works out of box on any device, (ii) if you have enough bandwidth and (iii) if you are not interested in video quality, Mjpeg over Http is a good trade-off.

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cardiffspaceman 1611 days ago
My use case at the moment is to get the video my STB at the office is showing to show in real time in a window on my laptop at home. Currently I use a webcam pointed at a monitor connected to the STB, and I use motion to make the MJPG available. The laptop has a VPN connection to the office and can connect to the HTTP server in motion. I need to be able to resolve text when it is a fairly light color on a supposedly contrasting fairly light background. In practice with the webcam and Motion I'm close. Frequently the text part doesn't quite work.

I was using ffserver also.

I don't particularly need the HTTP layer nor the browser itself. But I can tell a colleague on the office network: Look at my $WEBCAM_URL to show them something on my STB so that's nice. If I could say "ffplay $WEBCAM_PARAMS_AND_IP_ADDRESS" and it was available within the office, that would be the same.

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stackedinserter 1613 days ago
MJPEG is just a stream of JPEG pictures, delimited by some boundary.

Therefore no audio and compression/quality is shit. Also, MJPEG stream doesn't have timestamps, so it's impossible to provide smooth playback of MJPEG stream, or synchronize it with other streams.

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