Do you have any ideas on verifying if an IP camera is streaming a MJPEG, MPEG4, or H.264 video via Internet? Is there a handy software as viewer for testing this?

rgds, dove

other than using the IP camera manufacturers API's/Procedures, perhaps save a very short clip then get the file specs and its Video compression.

Ah yeah, a good method to do it the another way. By the way, are the format of streaming and recording essentially the same?

Thanks, dove

You can generally get a decent idea from the bandwidth it comsumes.

Dove, most IP Camera manufacturers provide some form of SDK/API/OCX, you should be able to utilize that somehow, if not for the compression at least to save a really short clip. Personally Ive never worked with any of the IP Camera/Server APIs so cant say though. With DVR OCXs I have used though is as simple as just saying SaveToFile then Stop it after X amount of seconds .. grab the file and its properties using your own code and then look for the Video Compression.

VLC will do it and its free

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

I use it to watch NASA TV also !
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx


z

zmxtech, that's great.


many thanks, dove

Unfortunately this will not always work. In fact a lot of vendors use proprietary streaming protocols that can not be viewed by standard players like VLC. Only via their own GUI or SDK.

- First and easiest approch is than to just ask the vendor
- Second you could use a network sniffer (like wireshark) to look at the traffic and identify the protocol this way.

By the way saving a part of a stream with the vendor specific player can be missleading as some vendors store a video in a different format than they use for streaming.