[MPlayer-users] IP camera stream

[Jason Rigby]

Hey everyone,
I'm just fiddling with my new IP camera and I'm trying to get it's
mpeg-4 stream to play on mplayer (or any player for that matter). The
camera can stream to a supplied ActiveX control but they're kinda yuck
since they only run on IE on Windows and I mainly use Firefox on
Linux.
i've located a file (/cgi-bin/video.vam) which appears to be a video
stream on the camera's
built-in webserver called video.vam and I've tried to play this with
no success. The ActiveX control seems to use this file in streaming
too and when accessed from a browser, it will download data
indefinitely.
A sample video.vam file can be found here:
http://www.shoreham.com.au/video.vam  and I am hoping someone with
more mpeg knowledge would be able to tell me whether any part of it
conforms to mpeg4 standards (the camera says that it streams in MPEG4
short header mode). When running mplayer -v
http://10.0.0.6/cgi-bin/video.vam from the shell, I get the
following from mplayer:

MPlayer 2:0.99+1.0pre8-0ubuntu8 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+ (Family: 15, Model: 79, Stepping: 2)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
get_path('codecs.conf') -> '/home/jason/.mplayer/codecs.conf'
Reading /home/jason/.mplayer/codecs.conf: Can't open
'/home/jason/.mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Reading /etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: Can't open
'/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Using built-in default codecs.conf.
CommandLine: '-v' 'http://10.0.0.6/cgi-bin/video.vam'
init_freetype
get_path('font/font.desc') -> '/home/jason/.mplayer/font/font.desc'
font: can't open file: /home/jason/.mplayer/font/font.desc
font: can't open file: /usr/share/mplayer/font/font.desc
Using MMX (with tiny bit MMX2) Optimized OnScreenDisplay
Linux RTC init error in ioctl (rtc_irqp_set 1024): Permission denied
Try adding "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to your
system startup scripts.
Using nanosleep() timing
get_path('input.conf') -> '/home/jason/.mplayer/input.conf'
Can't open input config file /home/jason/.mplayer/input.conf: No such
file or directory
Parsing input config file /etc/mplayer/input.conf
Input config file /etc/mplayer/input.conf parsed: 60 binds
Opening joystick device /dev/input/js0
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick
Setting up LIRC support...
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support.
You will not be able to use your remote control.
get_path('video.vam.conf') -> '/home/jason/.mplayer/video.vam.conf'
Playing http://10.0.0.6/cgi-bin/video.vam.
get_path('sub/') -> '/home/jason/.mplayer/sub/'
Filename for url is now http://10.0.0.6/cgi-bin/video.vam
Filename for url is now http://10.0.0.6/cgi-bin/video.vam
STREAM_HTTP(1), URL: http://10.0.0.6/cgi-bin/video.vam
Resolving 10.0.0.6 for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: 10.0.0.6
Connecting to server 10.0.0.6[10.0.0.6]: 80...
--- HTTP DEBUG HEADER --- START ---
protocol:           [HTTP/1.1]
http minor version: [1]
uri:                [(null)]
method:             [(null)]
status code:        [200]
reason phrase:      [OK]
body size:          [0]
Fields:
 0 - Content-Type: text/html
 1 - Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:57:40 GMT
 2 - Expires: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 00:00:01 GMT
 3 - Last-Modified: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:57:40 GMT
  4 - Pragma: no-cache
  5 - Server: Vivotek Network Camera
--- HTTP DEBUG HEADER --- END ---
Content-Type: [text/html]
Cache size set to 320 KBytes
STREAM: [null] http://10.0.0.6/cgi-bin/video.vam
STREAM: Description: http streaming
STREAM: Author: Bertrand, Albeau, Reimar Doeffinger, Arpi?
STREAM: Comment: plain http
CACHE_PRE_INIT: 0 [0] 0  pre:65536  eof:0
Cache fill: 17.50% (57344 bytes)
Checking for YUV4MPEG2
ASF_check: not ASF guid!
Checking for NuppelVideo
Checking for REAL
Checking for SMJPEG
Searching demuxer type for filename http://10.0.0.6/cgi-bin/video.vam ext: .vam
Checking for Nullsoft Streaming Video
Checking for MOV
Checking for VIVO
header block 1 size: 101
Checking for PVA
Checking for MPEG-TS...
TRIED UP TO POSITION 67484, FOUND 47, packet_size= 0, SEEMS A TS? 0
Checking for LMLM4 Stream Format
Invalid packet in LMLM4 stream: ch=18277 size=1986096408
LMLM4 Stream Format not found

Also, the IP camera accepts connections on ports 5001, 5002 and 5003
for a Control channel, Audio channel and Video channel, respectively.
Can mplayer connect to these ports to play the stream? Is there a
media client that can?

If anyone knows enough about mpeg4/mplayer and can help me out, that
would be great!

Cheers,
Jason