VODServer is a simple Java HTTP server for on-demand video streaming. Based on ffmpeg and rtmpdump, it can load video streams from a variety of sources and stream these to the client via HTTP, while transcoding the stream on-the-fly. VODServer functionality is based around services that are fully configurable in configuration files. This makes VODServer extremely flexible and powerful, allowing users to add support for many different internet services.
VODServer comes with various pre-configured services. Following are some examples:
Play a local video file
Play the first video found on the given page, if any. This will scan the given page for any mms:// and rtsp:// links or rtmp-related video data. This automated scan process may work for many services, however some services will require specific configuration.
Play the video on the given iLive page. iLive uses RTMP tokens so it is not supported by the more generic /playFromPage service.
For more information on available services, please see the Usage page. For more information on configuring VODServer and its services, please see the Configuration page.
VODServer was mainly developed to transcode internet video streams to a format suitable for the MediaPortal TV Server Engine, allowing MediaPortal users to watch and record internet streams similar to regular TV channels. The default configuration will therefore transcode streams to MPEG-TS format. You can however easily change the ffmpeg transcoding options and HTTP content type to something else, for example to a format supported by mobile devices. You can even create services that take the transcoding parameters and HTTP output content type as request parameters. As such, VODServer can also be useful in many other situations.
