[bthornto]

I would love to be wrong about this although I am convinced it can't be done with the tools that are available.

It seems there is this big gap between what you can do encode to and what Nokai supports.
What I was tring to do is seemingly simple, create a live video stream to a Nokia phone from a Linux box. I think I have exhausted every way to do this without success. I now believe it isn't possible.

To give you some background, the input stream is MPEG2 TS. I'm not
completely versed on all the codecs so bear with me. (I'm not sure if
it is relavant or not but the stream originates from a firewire
conencted Comcast cable box DCT6200)

I simple program test-mpeg2 dumps the stream to stdout.

I have been successful using VLC and DSS to publish the stream with
something like this:

./test-mpeg2 -r 2 | vlc --intf=dummy --rc-fake-tty -vvvv
stream/ts:///dev/stdin --sout "#transcode
{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mp4a,vb=96,ab=8,width=176,height=144}:r
tp{dst=127.0.0.1,port=1234,sdp=file:///usr/local/movies/look.sdp}"

It works great for quicktime. On the phone the video works well
although neither RealPlayer or PVPlayer can handle the MP4A audio in
the stream. I'll have to admit watching the olympics (w/o sound) was
very exiciting to see on my N70.

So I did some research, pulled up some docs on the nokia forum site
and in the videolan forums. It seems Real needs an AAC+ (amr_wb or
amr_nb) audio stream. VLC can decode this type of audio but not
encode it. At that point I went to ffmpeg.

Ffmpeg, using the 3gp libraraies can encode a file that can be
streamed. Basically you encode the file, move it into the DSS folder
and bingo, streaming video with sound to the phone. FFMPEG can't
create the SDP file though, so no live video.

FFserver is poorly documented, I played with it for serveral hours.
While I could get it to create the SDP file, it couldn't encode in
amr_nb or wb either.

I went down the path of using named pipes etc trying to use ffmpeg
with stdout etc.

mencoder doesn't help here either as it doesn;t really do any
streaming work.

I even tried to create the audio with MP3 in the MP4 stream with VLC,
again the video worked fine although neither real or pvplayer could
handle that.

I am beginning to believe it actually can't be done. I figure it's
either Nokia only supports some cutting edge codec and the gnu tools
haven't caught up or somebody doesn't want me to watch live video with
sound on my phone without the support of some big carrier that is
going to charge me more than it's worth.

There's a bunch of 'we got really close' posts out there. Streaming
files and live without sound.

Is it Nokia's intent that Joe consumer can't actually do this?

Some great reference I have relied on heavily:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6720
http://www.via.ecp.fr/via/ml/streami.../msg00045.html
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/archive/t-22589

I would love to be wrong about this, have over looked some command
line option of piece of software. Can anyone help?

Brad

[petrib]

The phone doesn't care what OS is run on the server where the video stream comes from.

The phone has support for certain audio/video/streaming formats. All that the phone cares about is that those specs are followed.

So, there is no kind of deliberate attempt against Linux/consumers involved.

The supported audio/video formats for many Nokia models (including the N70) you can find listed here: http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/1,6566,1_3,00.html

[bthornto]

Thank you for the link. I had looked at that a while back. It would seem the N70 support AAC stream in a MP4 container which is exactly what I've done. The N70 will not play this kind of stream.

So what tools would Nokia recommend a consumer use to convert a live MPEG2TS stream to something compatible with the N70.

I have since looked for tools on windows and MacOS and don't believe they are available either.

It seems the capabilities are available although the encoding solutions are only available in extremely costly commerical and carrier grade software suites.

I would guess by the lack of responses to this thread there are few, if none, others that simply streamed video from a cable box to their phone.

Brad

[fmsware]

If you're a lone consumer, you shouldn't expect much support. Available tools, as you've found out, are expensive and not intended for personal use. If you're using linux, you're on your own; no one has any commercial interest in helping you succeed. If you have a Media Center or similarly configured Windows machine, you can use Orb (www.orb.com).

[bthornto]

I've tried Orb. They have done a nice job bulding that service.

Rather than walk through the gate of OS flame wars, I'll revert to my original request for help.

Does Nokia have additonal information about AAC streaming? Can it be doen with a MP4V video stream in a mp4 container? Or is audio/video stremaing limited to amr+mp4/3gp and Real?

I have had an opportunity to review the previously posted documentation and it would seem aac+mp4v w/ .mp4 is possible although I have having difficulty making it work. Specifically the audio stream. The stream conatins the following:

vcodec - mp4v, bitrate 96, width 176, heigth 144
acodec - mp4a, samplerate 24000, bitrate 16, channels 1

with the resulting SDP file:

sdp=v=0
o=- 1141069957110962 2 IN IP4 127.0.0.1
s=NONE
t=0 0
a=tool:vlc 0.8.5-svn
c=IN IP4 127.0.0.1
m=audio 1230 RTP/AVP 96
a=rtpmap:96 mpeg4-generic/24000
a=fmtp:96 streamtype=5; profile-level-id=15; mode=AAC-hbr; config=1308; SizeLength=13;IndexLength=3; IndexDeltaLength=3; Profile=1;
m=video 1232 RTP/AVP 97
a=rtpmap:97 MP4V-ES/90000
a=fmtp:97 profile-level-id=3; config=000001b001000001b58913000001000000012000c4958ba9850584121463000001b24c61766335312e302e30;


Is the problem obvious to anyone?

Brad

[fmsware]

I have streamed 3gpp files to Real Player on a Nokia 6620 using mp4 video and aac audio (from DSS). The audio was hinted (LATM), but I don't know if there are any readily available tools for hinting live streams.

PS: Not flaming linux, just pointing out that there's no money in supporting it for consumer applications, so you're not likely to find much help.