My example will embed the video using Apples recommended multi browser html and javascript code,  reference movie file and a poster image.

First, the reference movie file. If you use Quicktime Pro you can get the software to generate a reference file when you encode your movies for the web. The reference file has a .mov file extension but is not a media file instead it passes information to Quicktime to help it determine the best media to play for the client, i.e. low bandwidth version, iPhone version etc. In my case I am streaming all my media through a Darwin Streaming Server using RTSP and will create a reference file that points to the videos on my Darwin server.

The media reference file is accessed from Quicktime via HTTP so needs to be saved on in a publicly accessible area of your site.

In my example I am going to embed Bowies Lets Dance video. The video is saved in my Darwin media folder /home/media/video and is called davidbowie-lets-dance.mp4.

In my website folder I create a reference file called davidbowie-lets-dance.mov and paste the following text into it.

RTSPtextRTSP://medazzaland.co.uk:554/video/davidbowie-lets-dance.mp4

We need a “poster” image to represent the video, this will be shown on the embed page before the video plays, so we simply take a frame from the video and save it in a publicly accessible folder, in this example its called davidbowie-lets-dance.png

Now the HTML code to embed the video. In the head section we need to include Apples javascript and some styling that is used for the Click Here link on the embedded video.

<script src="http://www.apple.com/library/quicktime/scripts/ac_quicktime.js" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="http://www.apple.com/library/quicktime/scripts/qtp_library.js" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"></script>
<link href="http://www.apple.com/library/quicktime/stylesheets/qtp_library.css" rel="StyleSheet" type="text/css" />

And now for the embed code which should go between the body tags of your html

	<div id="quicktimevideo">
		<script type="text/javascript"><!--
		QT_WritePoster_XHTML('Click to Play - David Bowie - Lets Dance', 'images/davidbowie-lets-dance.png',
			'http://my.medazzaland.co.uk/reference/davidbowie-lets-dance.mov',
			'720', '576', '',
			'controller', 'true',
			'autoplay', 'true',
			'bgcolor', 'black',
			'scale', 'aspect');
	//-->
	</script>
	<noscript>
	<object width="720" height="576" classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
		<param name="src" value="images/davidbowie-lets-dance.png" />
		<param name="href" value="http://my.medazzaland.co.uk/reference/davidbowie-lets-dance.mov" />
		<param name="target" value="myself" />
		<param name="controller" value="false" />
		<param name="autoplay" value="false" />
		<param name="scale" value="aspect" />
		<embed width="720" height="576" type="video/quicktime" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"
			src="images/davidbowie-lets-dance.png"
			href="http://my.medazzaland.co.uk/reference/davidbowie-lets-dance.mov"
			target="myself"
			controller="false"
			autoplay="false"
			scale="aspect">
		</embed>
	</object>
	</noscript>

	</div>

This code should work across all browsers and will embed the video using the poster image as a link as show below.

Notice that the embed code points to the reference .mov file with an http link, the reference file then redirects Quicktime to the correct RTSP link for the video.

If you want to serve up a lot of videos in this way, you can create the reference file on the fly with PHP as I have done with this example – click the photo above to goto a demo page. The video information, name, title, size etc. are all stored in a database, the PHP script pulls out the video info from the database and creates the reference files and html on the fly.

As a side note, I was unable to compile Darwin from source under the latest version of Ubuntu Server 11.10, I had to use previously compiled files from another Ubuntu server running Ubuntu 8.x for the install.

I am still looking at perfecting the MP4 encoding for Darwin streaming, so more on that another time and Happy Birthday David Bowie!

DSS no longer compiles and runs new Ubuntu versions. If you want to use Darwin Streaming Server run it as a docker container using my DSS image.

If you want to know how I compiled DSS 6.0.3 on Ubuntu PRECISE back in the stone age – read on…

Over the last few years I have been involved with some projects that required streaming audio and video solutions and I have been working with the Open Source Darwin Streaming Server from Apple running mainly on the Linux platform. DSS will run under Windows but I wouldn’t recommend it.

The Darwin Streaming Server (DSS) is the open source version of Apples quicktime server technology which is built into Apples OS X Server. DSS can run under Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. The streaming server supports QuickTime Movie (MOV),  MPEG-4 (MP4), and 3GPP (3GP) “hinted” files. Support resources for DSS are quite limited so I will start to post information here to document some of the work I have done with DSS, including installation, configuration, use etc.

This first post will document the compilation, installation and testing of the current version of DSS, v6.0.3 under Linux.

The commands below assume you have superuser rights.

Compilation

To compile DSS we first need to make sure we have the required packages for the download and compile utilities.

Execute the following as a superuser, or use the sudo prefix command.

apt-get install build-essential wget

Need to get 19.6MB of archives.
After this operation, 66.8MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Hit Y to download and install the required packages.

Change to a working directory for the download and compilation i.e. /home/DSS and download the DSS 6.0.3 source (31MB) tar file directly to your working folder using wget:

wget http://static.macosforge.org/dss/downloads/DarwinStreamingSrvr6.0.3-Source.tar

Uncompress the tar file

tar -xvf DarwinStreamingSrvr6.0.3-Source.tar

Rename the source file directory to allow us to create a patch directory. The patches are required to compile DSS under a 64bit OS, but there is also no harm in applying them if you are using a 32bit OS.

mv DarwinStreamingSrvr6.0.3-Source DarwinStreamingSrvr6.0.3-Source.orig

Download the first patch file

wget http://dss.macosforge.org/trac/raw-attachment/ticket/6/dss-6.0.3.patch

Apply the patch

patch -p0 < dss-6.0.3.patch

Move the source file directory back

mv DarwinStreamingSrvr6.0.3-Source.orig DarwinStreamingSrvr6.0.3-Source

Download the second patch file

wget http://dss.macosforge.org/trac/raw-attachment/ticket/6/dss-hh-20080728-1.patch

Apply the patch

patch -p0 < dss-hh-20080728-1.patch

Change into the DSS source file directory

cd DarwinStreamingSrvr6.0.3-Source

Rename the source install file

mv Install Install.orig

Get the latest install file

wget http://dss.macosforge.org/trac/raw-attachment/ticket/6/Install

Set execute permissions on the install file

chmod +x Install

Compile the source code (dot slash Buildit)

./Buildit

-----------------------
Configuring for the Linux i686 platform
Building for Linux.i686 with gcc

Now is a good time to grab a coffee as the build process could take a few minutes. The various warning messages you will see can be safely ignored and unless you experience another serious error the compilation is completed when the command prompt returns.

Installation

First create the qtss user and group required by DSS

addgroup -system qtss
adduser -system -no-create-home -ingroup qtss qtss

and then run the DSS install script. (dot slash Install – case sensitive!)

./Install

The install script creates the DSS directory structure and copies files and sample media. When complete you will be prompted to create an administrator username and password. Enter the username and password you will use to administer DSS. Confirm the password.

Adding userName admin
Setup Complete!

Check permissions for the DSS configuration file in /etc/streaming, it must be writeable or the changes made in the administration pages will fail.

chmod 755 /etc/streaming/streamingserver.xml

The DSS installation is now complete, and the server should be started! To manually start the server use

/usr/local/sbin/streamingadminserver.pl

If the server is already running you will see

Failed to start Streaming Admin Server.
Port 1220 is in use by another process.
The Streaming Admin Server may already be running.

We can also configure DSS to auto start automatically on boot up, to do this download the following script

wget http://dss.macosforge.org/trac/raw-attachment/ticket/6/darwin-streaming-server

make it executable

chmod +x darwin-streaming-server

Move the script into /etc/init.d

mv darwin-streaming-server /etc/init.d/darwin-streaming-server

and update rc.d to so that it can auto start and respond to start/stop commands.

update-rc.d darwin-streaming-server defaults

The server can now be started and stopped with

/etc/init.d/darwin-streaming-server stop

/etc/init.d/darwin-streaming-server start

Configuration

The administration web service for DSS runs on TCP port 1220, to login to the server start a browser session and navigate to

http://servername-or-ip-address:1220

You will see the DSS login page, login with the username and password you created during the installation and click the Log In button.

The setup assistant will ask you for a MP3 broadcast password “The MP3 Broadcast password is required in order to receive MP3 broadcast streams.”

Enter the MP3 broadcast password you wish to use and click next to continue.

The setup assistant will ask you if you want to enable SSL for admin. “This will enable encryption between the administration server and the web client. This feature requires that you have a valid streaming server SSL certificate installed.”

Click the Next button to continue.

The setup assistant will ask you to confirm the Media folder for DSS “This is the folder or directory in which your media is stored.” To accept the default media folder (/usr/local/movies/) click the Next button, or enter the path to a new media folder. If you change the media folder make sure you set ownership of the new folder to the qtss user

chown -R qtss.root /home/mymediafolder

The setup assistant will ask you if you want to use Port 80 for streaming “This allows you to stream through firewalls.” Streaming on TCP port 80 instead of default RTSP ports will ensure that streaming clients behind most firewalls that might have none standard ports, such as RTSP blocked, will be able to access the streaming server via TCP Port 80 which is commonly used for HTTP access and is more likely to be permitted through firewalls. I recommend considering this later as you need to be sure that any existing services running on Port 80, i.e. Apache have been modified or stopped before you try and use DSS streaming on Port 80.

Click the Finish button to continue.

The main DSS administration screen will appear and the DSS installation and basic configuration is complete.

Make a tarball of your install directory and save it somewhere for future use!

Testing

If you look in the default media directory (/usr/local/movies) you will see some test audio and video media files.

i.e. /usr/local/movies/sample_h264_300kbit.mp4

To test your installation and stream one of the example media files open a media player capable of RTSP streaming, i.e. Apple Quicktime Player, VLC and open a new network stream in the player with the address

rtsp://servername-or-ip-address/sample_h264_300kbit.mp4

The 300Kbit h264 sample MP4 file will stream from your server and should play in your media player.

DSS Uses the following default directories for config, playlists, logs etc.

/usr/local/sbin/Darwin Streaming Server —- Server Software
/usr/local/sbin/streamingadminserver.pl —- Web Frontend
/etc/streaming —- Configuration Directory
/etc/streaming/streamingserver.xml —- Configuration File
/var/streaming/logs —- Logs
/usr/local/movies —- Default media directory

I will look at configuring the server further and preparing media for streaming in another blog post.

Further Resources

Looking for a media player for darwin mp3 streams – check out the facebook darwin media tab demo on my facebook page.

http://dss.macosforge.org/

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-651556.html

http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo2/streaming-server-users

http://dss.macosforge.org/post/40/

http://soundscreen.com/streaming/