Stream video and audio with Boxtream [LWN.net]

By Forrest Cook
April 30, 2008

Boxtream is a GPL-licensed streaming video and audio system that is being developed by Jerome Alet and a team of developers at the University of Nice in France:

Boxtream is a mobile and autonomous audio and video streaming and recording studio. Of course, depending on your own hardware choices, the number and extent of capabilities and the quality of the final results may vary, but at least the software part should be versatile enough to accommodate even the most basic hardware. Boxtream was mostly designed to stream live courses featuring a professor and his slides (or any other computer based output like software training, web browser, video player...), but can also be used to stream congresses, interviews and the like.

Boxtream uses a virtual smorgasbord of open-source components to achieve its results. Scripting is done with the Python language, metadata is stored in the XML format. The GStreamer multimedia framework library is used for handling the audio/video data and the Icecast streaming media server is used for media distribution. Video and audio are encoded with Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis. The Graphviz graph visualization software is used for presenting a graphical view of the video system's scenario.

A few notable Boxtream features include a GUI interface, support for on-disk recording, selectable audio and video rates, support for image overlays and automation for all tasks. The Boxtream features list has a more complete list. Boxtream supports a number of video switching devices as well as other video and audio equipment. The hardware list has more information.

This architecture diagram gives a pictorial view of a fairly complicated Boxtream system. An online example shows the system being used for a scientific conference.

Boxtream version 0.998 was announced on April 27, 2008. Changes include support for more video hardware, inclusion of the dia schema software, bug fixes and a license change from GPLv2 to GPLv3. If your organization is in need of a full-featured video conferencing system, you should give Boxtream a look.

(Log in to post comments)