Spook Live Video Streamer
                        =========================

 * About Spook

Spook is a daemon for capturing, processing, encoding, and distributing
live video and audio streams.  It can be used for webcams, video
surveillance, live television/video programming distribution, webcasts, and
even make-shift video conferencing.

Video input can be fed from Video4Linux(1/2) devices and Firewire IIDC
cameras, and audio input can be fed from OSS devices or ALSA devices via
the OSS compatibility layer.  Supported video encoders are MPEG4, via XviD,
and JPEG, via JPEGlib.  The only compressed audio format supported
currently is MP2 (MPEG1 layer 2) via a built-in encoder.  MPEG4 and MP2 RTP
streams are available via RTSP and JPEG stills are available via HTTP.

 * License and warranty

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

 * Prerequisites

You may need several libraries to compile Spook, depending on the modules
you want to use:

    * XviD 1.0.X    <http://www.xvid.org/>
        This should be a recent enough version of XviD that it uses the
        dev-api-4 interface.  The old 0.9.x tree won't cut it.  I use
        1.0.0_rc2 but any later version should work as well.  If you're
        running on a PowerPC architecture, you need at least 1.0.0_rc4.
    * libdc1394     <http://sourceforge.net/projects/libdc1394/>
        This is used to control Firewire IIDC cameras under Linux.  I've
        used versions 0.9.1 and 0.9.3.  If you're using a kernel older
        than 2.4.23, use version 0.9.2.  Otherwise, use the latest version.
    * jpeg-6b       <http://www.ijg.org/>
        You really should already have this, but apparently some
        distributions don't install this by default if you don't install X.
        See if your distribution has a package called "jpeg" or "jpeg6b" or
        "jpeglib" before installing from source.

You will need to have your kernel sources installed and available if you
want to use:

    * The Video4Linux2 input module.
    * Special support for the V4L1 PWC driver (for "Phillips USB Webcam",
      which includes a number of Logitech webcams).

Note: Spook doesn't need X.  There's no GUI, so there's no need for X
libraries.  However, libdc1394 chokes when it tries to compile the example
applications, so you might have to edit the Makefile to get it to finish
the build.

Now that you have the necessary libraries installed, it would be a good
idea to make sure your video source works:

If you have a Firewire cam on Linux, I recommend testing with Coriander
from <http://www.tele.ucl.ac.be/PEOPLE/DOUXCHAMPS/ieee1394/coriander/>.
If Coriander can't talk to the camera, neither can Spook.  (Note: Recent
versions of Coriander require the latest libdc1394.  If you have a
libdc1394 older than 0.9.3, try Coriander 0.33.)

If you plan to use a frame grabber, XAWTV will probably work fine.

If you have a USB webcam, I don't know what program you might use, but try
to test it with something before trying Spook.

 * Compiling Spook

Spook uses Autoconf and Automake to generate the Makefiles.  Run the
`configure` script in the source tree to determine which libraries you have
available.  When configure finishes, it will list the modules that will be
compiled.

If a module that you need is disabled, make sure you have the necessary
libraries installed.  You can force the issue by using a --enable flag to
configure; for example: `configure --enable-input-dc1394`  Then when
configure encounters any dependencies missing for that module, it will
abort and print a message that will hopefully tell you what is missing.

If your Linux kernel sources are installed somewhere other than
/usr/src/linux, pass the "--with-kernel-source=/usr/local/somewhere" option
to the configure script.  The kernel source tree is necessary for V4L2 and
the PWC-specific V4L functions, but if you don't need either of these,
Spook will build fine without the kernel tree.

After everything is configured to your satisfaction, run `make` to do the
build.  (You can do a `make install`, but it's not recommended.)

 * Configuring Spook

The configuration file for Spook is named spook.conf, and at the moment it
is read from the current directory.  Eventually spook.conf will move to a
standard system directory, but since Spook doesn't yet daemonize itself, I
recommend running Spook out of the source directory.

spook.conf is divided into global options and block declarations.  The
global options set parameters such as the TCP port number for incoming
connections.  The block declarations define inputs, filters, encoders, and
outputs.

In brief, each block defines a specific function that should be performed
on a video stream, and the stream input(s) and output(s) for that function.
The "Input" for each block must match the "Output" from a previous block.
Frame grabbers and audio capture devices will have no "Input" because they
get media from the hardware, and RTSP and HTTP outputs will have no
"Output" because they send media over the network to clients.

The spook.conf.dist file contains well-commented examples of all supported
modules.  Outputs are shown for a single RTSP video(+audio) network stream
and a JPEG snapshot stream served via HTTP.

There are several possible ways to configure Video4Linux frame grabbers.

    * If you are running kernel 2.6 and your frame grabber supports
      compressed video formats (MJPEG/MPEG), use the V4L2 module.
    * If you are running kernel 2.6 and your frame grabber driver is
      written for V4L2 (including BTTV), use the V4L2 module.
    * Otherwise, use the V4L module.

There are two example V4L configurations in the spook.conf file.  One is
for frame grabber cards with analog video inputs which should be simple to
configure.  The other is for USB webcams which are more of a challenge.
Spook needs to know the frame rate of the input to configure the MPEG4
encoder, but there is no standard method for configuring the frame rate of
USB webcams.  Currently, the V4L module will attempt to detect and
configure Philips webcams that use the pwc driver (including many Logitech
cams), but if all else fails try using the "FrameRate auto;" directive and
Spook will attempt to guess the framerate of the device.  This will take a
few seconds and isn't very accurate, but it should work well enough to get
you going.

For OSS audio, Spook expects the mixer device to be set up in advance.
This means aumix or similar should be used to select the correct input port
and set the levels.

 * Running Spook

Spook accepts three optional flags:

    -c <filename>    specifies the path to the config file
    -f               starts Spook with verbose logging
    -D               starts Spook with full debug logging turned on

The default config file location is "./spook.conf", so if you run Spook
from the build directory this option is unnecessary.  The -D and -f flags
will cause additional log information to be printed; -f is good for
tracking down configuration and client problems, and -D is really only
useful for developers.

If (when) you report bugs, please send the last few dozen lines of output
from running Spook with the -D flag.

 * Viewing video from Spook

After all that work, it's time to verify that everything works correctly.
For this section, I'll assume that you're using the example spook.conf
and you're running Spook on a host with the IP address 192.168.123.45.  

HTTP is easy.  Point a web browser at <http://192.168.123.45:7070/webcam>.
You should see a still image captured from the camera within the last five
seconds.  If this doesn't work, something serious is wrong and you should
fix it before proceeding with the MPEG4 testing.  Check the output to your
terminal to see if the DC1394 or V4L(2) module was able to connect to the
camera and start the video transfer.

RTP is a bit harder to get working right.  First of all, you should start
by trying to view the stream from a system on the local network with no
firewalls or NATs in the way.  If you can, try to view the stream from the
system running Spook, as this will rule out any network connectivity
issues.

You basically have three options for client software, depending on your
platform: VLC, MPlayer or Apple QuickTime Player.

On both Linux and Win32, VLC is the player most compatible with all the
features of Spook.  You may have to compile it from source against the
Live.com libraries, however, as the VLC binary releases for some platforms
don't have RTSP support.  VLC lives at: <http://www.videolan.org/>.

On Linux, MPlayer can be compiled against the Live.com streaming libraries
as described here: <http://www.live.com/mplayer/>.  However, MPlayer can
ONLY play streams with no audio!  If you have a video-only stream, you
should be able to execute `mplayer rtsp://192.168.123.45:7070/` to play the
stream.  Older versions of MPlayer might need the "-fps 30" option to
specify the framerate.  If there are firewalls or NATs between the player
and the server, use the "-rtsp-stream-over-tcp" to force the media over the
TCP session.

On Win32 or Mac, use Apple Quicktime <http://www.apple.com/quicktime/> to
play the stream.  If there are firewalls or NATs between the player and the
server, you might have to change the "Transport Settings" to force the use
of "HTTP" for streaming.  Select "Open URL" from the menubar and type
"rtsp://192.168.123.45:7070/".  QuickTime should initiate the RTSP session
and begin buffering the stream.  Note that QuickTime always uses a
three-second buffer, which is annoying with a live stream, and I can't find
a way to disable it.

 * Future work

Obviously, there's a lot to be done to improve Spook.  Other than fixing
the obvious deficiencies and limitations discussed earlier, here are the
features I'm working on, roughly by priority:

    * Revamped configuration and better error handling
    * Better authentication and access control
    * Relay agent for RTP streams
    * Simple image filters like cropping, rotation and mirroring
    * Multicast RTP
    * Other "novelty" output types, like VNC and aalib

If you want to receive information about Spook updates, please visit the
Freshmeat page for Spook at <http://freshmeat.net/projects/spook/> and use
the "Subscribe to new releases" feature.

 * Contact

Spook is written and maintained by Nathan Lutchansky.  Send suggestions,
bug reports and patches to <[email protected]>.

The Spook webpage at <http://www.litech.org/spook/> where updated releases
and documentation may be found.


Nathan Lutchansky
2005-02-07