javaffmpegudpmpeg2-ts

How to receive Mpeg-ts stream over UDP from FFMpeg in Java


I have a live video stream from FFMpeg, and I am having a hard time viewing the stream using my own custom Java application. Before someone tells me to use VLC or something like that I do want to use my own application. The stream I am trying to read is a H.264 encoded Mpeg-ts stream streamed over UDP. I do know how to decode the H.264 frames, but I am simply wondering about how to receive the Mpeg-ts stream.


Solution

  • Jon Kittel provided a good answer, anyway in the question comments it is mentioned UNICAST communication, so Jon's code is not usable in this case. A simplified unicast receiver is provided below (credit to P. Tellenbach for the original example).

    import java.io.FileOutputStream;
    import java.net.DatagramPacket;
    import java.net.DatagramSocket;
    
    public class DatagramServer
    {
       private final static int PACKETSIZE = 2048 ;
    
       public static void main( String args[] )
       {
        // Check the arguments
        //      if( args.length != 1 )
        //      {
        //         System.out.println( "usage: DatagramServer port" ) ;
        //         return ;
        //      }
    
          try
          {
             // Convert the argument to ensure that is it valid
             int port = 1234; //Integer.parseInt( args[0] ) ;
             FileOutputStream output = new FileOutputStream("testStream.ts", true);
    
             // Construct the socket
             DatagramSocket socket = new DatagramSocket( port ) ;
    
             System.out.println( "The server is ready..." ) ;
    
             DatagramPacket packet = new DatagramPacket( new byte[PACKETSIZE], PACKETSIZE ) ;
             for( ;; )
             {
                // Receive a packet (blocking)
                socket.receive( packet );
                try {
                    output.write(packet.getData());
                } finally {
                    output.close();
                }
            }  
         }catch (IOException exception) {
                exception.printStackTrace();
        }
      }
    }
    

    This client will listen for UDP stream on localhost address, port 1234, and will write each received packet into testStream.ts file. If the stream is H.264 encoded Mpeg-ts, the outputfile can be opened in any moment with a player to reproduce the video stream captured until that moment.