Flussonic

Flussonic Media Server is IP video streaming server developed by Flussonic, LLC.^[1] The server can ingest and stream out video using a variety of streaming protocols on private local area networks, private IP networks, the public Internet to personal computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, mobile devices, IPTV set top boxes, smart TVs connected to the Internet. The server is an application developed using the Erlang programming language and can be deployed on linux operating systems, most suitable of which are Debian and Ubuntu.

History

Version 3.58.1 was released in Nov 12, 2012,^[3] and was initially based on ErlyVideo, an Internet video streaming server developed by Russian entrepreneur and software author, Max Lapshin. The server was configured via command line interface and had a web interface to show playback and minimal reporting features. In October of the same year, Version 4.0 was released with a major revamp.^[4] The most significant new functionality introduced with Version 4.0 was an HTML5-based graphical user interface. Subsequently, a major revamp was conducted and version 4.1 was released on December 19, 2013 and has seen subsequent incremental updates, the most recent of which is version 4.1.19, which now allows users to configure the server from a web browser running on their computer, tablet or smartphone.

Usage

• Live streaming of video and audio utilizing RTMP, RTP/RTSP and MPEG-TS encoders
• Video on Demand streaming playback and delivery to clients via HDS, RTMP, RTSP and HLS
• DVB TV stream capture from encoded source and re-streaming over the public Internet or private networks
• Videos as a Service applications, mostly related to CCTV camera ingest, recording and playback
• Streaming over IPTV networks to set-top boxes

Functionality

Streams can be ingested to Flussonic using software based encoders like Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder, VLC, FFMPEG, WireCast and almost hardware based encoder that outputs multicast or unicast UDP provided the stream is encoded in AVC1 otherwise known as H.264/AAC.

Provided the content is encoded in H.264/AAC, Flussonic can ingest video using RTMP protocol from software encoders like Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder or other streaming servers like Wowza or Flash Media Server, MPEG-TS over UDP or HTTP from VLC, HLS by pulling video from an .m3u8 exposed over a web server like Nginx, RTSP from IP camera sources. Streams can be played out over HDS using any OSMF-based player, RTMP using JW ^[4] or Adobe Flash player, HLS using Safari or Quicktime, and RTSP on VLC or mplayer.

Flussonic can record these streams using its digital video recording (DVR) functionality and store these recordings compressed. Playback of DVR is available through Flussonic’s web-gui and can be called via the archive function and presented to viewers via Flash-based players using the HDS^[5] and RTMP protocols, as well HLS for iOS and Android devices.

Additional features include support for DRM,^[6] and the ability to install it through Amazon S3.^[7]

References