[MPlayer-users] Re: Video Streaming/H.323

[Ross Finlayson]

>I have a doubt regarding video streaming: how hard would be to use mplayer
>as a video player on an application such as GnomeMeeting (NetMeeting for
>Linux)?  Is it possible to use mplayer in a video conference application,
>over H.323?

MPlayer can already be used as a RTSP client (see 
<http://www.live.com/mplayer/>), and adapting it to act as a *receive-only* 
SIP client would be relatively straightforward, because SIP is quite 
similar to RTSP (and the LIVE.COM Streaming Media libraries already include 
some basic SIP client functionality).  H.323 would be more work (because 
it's quite different from RTSP and SIP), but H.323 seems to be pretty much 
a dead end; all of the momentum in the IP conferencing/telephony world 
these days seems to be with SIP.

The more difficult task, though, would be to make MPlayer act as a 
*two-way* SIP audio/video conferencing tool - i.e., with the capability of 
sending data as well as receiving it.  This would presumably require 
hooking together MPlayer and MEncoder functionality into a single 
application (with SIP/RTP sending/receiving support).  That would seem to 
be the non-trivial task...

         Ross.