Afrostream Media Server is a streaming software implemented in Go under BSD Licence.
With Afrostream Media Server (AMS), you can stream MP4 audio/video files to various formats (like DASH, HLS and Smooth Streaming). Currently, the 0.1-alpha version only supports DASH, The implementation of HLS and Smooth Streaming is underway. The goal of this project is to provide an Unified Streaming like OpenSource software. Feel free to contact and/or join us to participate to this great project. AMS is considered as experimental.
For the demo, we use the DASH IF Reference Client 1.5.1. Click on the DASH IF Reference Client 1.5.1 link and enter the following URL:
http://origin.afrostream.tv:8000/vod/demo_ams/Big_Buck_Bunny_1080p_surround_FrostWire.com.json/.mpd
AMS is running on port 8000 and distribute Big Bug Bunny in DASH format. All profiles has been generated following the How to run section.
All feedbacks are welcome, you can contact me in different ways (to contribute or talk about the project):
IRC: irc.freenode.net #ams
Skype: spebsd
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
Slack: opensource-ams.slack.com
AMS is developped in GoLang so you can build the software for any Operating System you want.
First, clone the github project to a local directory:
git clone https://github.com/Afrostream/afrostream-media-server.git
Enter to the directory freshly created by git:
cd afrostream-media-server
For the next step, you will need Go installed, please refer to the Go website for installing.
Build amspackager (the packager) and ams (the media server), replace with the base directory where you ran git clone command:
export GOPATH=<fullpath>/afrostream-media-server
go build amspackager.go
go build ams.go
Install binaries in a bin directory (eg: /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin):
cp amspackager /usr/local/bin/
cp ams /usr/local/bin/
Now you've two binaries amspackager and ams installed on your OS.
The first thing to do is creating mp4 files needed by amspackager and ams to create DASH fragments. We use FFMpeg software to generate these mp4 files.
First, We create 4 video profiles and 1 audio profile with a video.mp4 files containing 1 video stream and 1 audio stream:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -y -vf yadif=0:-1:0,scale="426:trunc(ow/a/2)*2",setsar=1:1 -c:v libx264 -preset:v fast -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 -coder:v 0 -b:v 400k -minrate 400k -maxrate 400k -bufsize 400k -g 50 -keyint_min 50 -sc_threshold 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:v -an -map_chapters -1 -threads 0 video_h264-426x240-400.mp4
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -y -vf yadif=0:-1:0,scale="640:trunc(ow/a/2)*2",setsar=1:1 -c:v libx264 -preset:v fast -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 -coder:v 0 -b:v 800k -minrate 800k -maxrate 800k -bufsize 800k -g 50 -keyint_min 50 -sc_threshold 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:v -an -map_chapters -1 -threads 0 video_h264-640x360-800.mp4
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -y -vf yadif=0:-1:0,scale="854:trunc(ow/a/2)*2",setsar=1:1 -c:v libx264 -preset:v fast -profile:v baseline -level 3.1 -coder:v 1 -b:v 1600k -minrate 1600k -maxrate 1600k -bufsize 1600k -g 50 -keyint_min 50 -sc_threshold 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:v -an -map_chapters -1 -threads 0 video_h264-854x480-1600.mp4
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -y -vf yadif=0:-1:0,scale="1280:trunc(ow/a/2)*2",setsar=1:1 -c:v libx264 -preset:v fast -profile:v main -level 3.1 -coder:v 1 -b:v 3000k -minrate 3000k -maxrate 3000k -bufsize 3000k -g 50 -keyint_min 50 -sc_threshold 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:v -an -map_chapters -1 -threads 0 video_h264-1280x720-3000.mp4
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -y -vn -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 128k -ar 48000 -map 0:a:0 -map_chapters -1 -threads 0 video_aac-128.mp4
Output profiles will be:
Video H264 @ 426x240 400kbits/s Baseline profile (3.0)
Video H264 @ 640x360 800kbits/s Baseline profile (3.0)
Video H264 @ 854x480 1600kbits/s Baseline profile (3.1)
Video H264 @ 1280x720 3000kbits/s Main profile (3.1)
Audio AAC @ 48000Hz 128kbits/s
Move all mp4 files to a directory that you'll use for the HTTP media server document root, cd to this directory and run amspackager to prepare the content for AMS:
/usr/local/bin/amspackager -o video.json -d 8 -i video_h264-426x240-400.mp4 -i video_h264-640x360-800.mp4 -i video_h264-854x480-1600.mp4 -i video_h264-1280x720-3000.mp4 -i video_aac-128.mp4
Output will be:
AMSPackager -- [email protected] / Afrostream
-- Parsing file='video_h264-426x240-400.mp4' language='eng'
-- Parsing file='video_h264-640x360-800.mp4' language='eng'
-- Parsing file='video_h264-854x480-1600.mp4' language='eng'
-- Parsing file='video_h264-1280x720-3000.mp4' language='eng'
-- Parsing file='video_aac-128.mp4' language='eng'
-- Creating package file 'video.json'
All files has been packaged successfully
If you have vtt subtitles files, you can add them with -i video.en.vtt -l eng -i video.fr.vtt -l fra ... Your video is prepared for AMS, so let's run Afrostream Media Server as root and listening on HTTP port 80 (you can package any video files on the fly without restarting AMS):
# /usr/local/bin/ams -d <document_root_path> -p 80
Now, you can request URL
http://<ip_of_your_server>/video.json/.mpd
with a dash player like DASHJS. That's all.
| Functionnality | Implemented |
|---|---|
| DASH on-the-fly | Yes |
| HLS on-the-fly | No |
| Smooth Streaming on-the-fly | No |
| Live support | No |
| Support mp4 files > 4GB | No |
| HEVC/H.265 | No |
| DRM | No |
There is probably some bugs in this implementation, all mp4 parsing has been developped in pure GoLang, no external libraries has been used. If you see any bugs please report to [email protected] or [email protected].