WebGear_RTC API¶

Overview¶

WebGear_RTC is similar to WeGear API in many aspects but utilizes WebRTC technology under the hood instead of Motion JPEG, which makes it suitable for building powerful video-streaming solutions for all modern browsers as well as native clients available on all major platforms.

WebGear_RTC is implemented with the help of aiortc library which is built on top of asynchronous I/O framework for Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) and Object Real-Time Communication (ORTC) and supports many features like SDP generation/parsing, Interactive Connectivity Establishment with half-trickle and mDNS support, DTLS key and certificate generation, DTLS handshake, etc.

WebGear_RTC can handle multiple consumers seamlessly (every peer gets every frame) and supports ICE (Interactive Connectivity Establishment) protocol with user-defined STUN (Session Traversal Utilities for NAT), and TURN (Traversal Using Relays around NAT) servers (via ice_servers attribute) that help us to seamlessly establish direct media connection with the remote peers for uninterrupted data flow. It also allows us to define our custom streaming class with suitable source to transform frames easily before sending them across the network(see this doc example).

WebGear_RTC API works in conjunction with Starlette ASGI application and can also flexibly interact with Starlette's ecosystem of shared middleware, mountable applications, Response classes, Routing tables, Static Files, Templating engine(with Jinja2), etc.

Additionally, WebGear_RTC API also provides internal wrapper around VideoGear, which itself provides internal access to CamGear, PiGear, and FFGear APIs.

Data-Files Auto-Generation WorkFlow for WebGear_RTC¶

Same as WebGear, WebGear_RTC API automatically checks for critical data files(i.e index.html, 404.html & 500.html inside the templates folder, and custom.js inside the static/js folder) on initialization of the webgear_rtc directory at the default location which gives rise to the following two possible scenario:

• If data-files found: it will proceed normally for instantiating the WebRTC media server through Starlette application.
• If data-files not found: it will trigger the Auto-Generation process

Default Location¶

• A default location is the path of the directory where data files/folders are downloaded/generated/saved.
• By default, the .vidgear the folder at the home directory of your machine (for e.g /home/foo/.vidgear on Linux ) serves as the default location.
• But you can also use WebGear_RTC's custom_data_location dictionary attribute to change/alter default location path to somewhere else.

WebGear_RTC :: DEBUG :: `/home/foo/.vidgear` is the default location for saving WebGear_RTC data-files.

Auto-Generation process¶

• On triggering this process, WebGear_RTC API creates webgear_rtc directory, and templates and static folders inside along with js, css, img sub-folders at the assigned default location.

• Thereby at this default location, the necessary default data files will be downloaded from dedicated vidgear-vitals repository (GitLab mirror first, GitHub as fallback) inside respective folders in the following order:

      .vidgear
      └── webgear_rtc
          ├── static
          │   ├── css
          │   │   └── custom.css
          │   ├── img
          │   │   └── favicon-32x32.png
          │   └── js
          │       └── custom.js
          └── templates
              ├── 404.html
              ├── 500.html
              ├── base.html
              └── index.html
      6 directories, 7 files
  

• Finally these downloaded files thereby are verified for errors and API proceeds for instantiating the Starlette application normally.

WebGear_RTC's Default Template¶

The WebGear_RTC API by default uses simple & elegant WebGear_RTC's Default Theme which looks like something as follows:

Index.html¶

Can be accessed by visiting WebGear_RTC app server, running at http://localhost:8000/:

404.html¶

Appears when respective URL is not found, for example http://localhost:8000/ok:

500.html¶

Appears when an API Error is encountered:

Limitations¶

• Codecs: only VP8 and H.264 video (aiortc's encoders), with aiortc's own bitrate ranges (H.264: 0.5-3 Mbps, VP8: 0.25-1.5 Mbps). Use codec attribute to force one. Frames with odd width/height are cropped by one pixel to even dimensions.
• Framerate: frames are paced at source's framerate (if reported by the source, up to 120), otherwise at 30 fps.
• Video only: no audio or data channels.
• Source is paused while no peer is connected, and once the source ends (without enable_infinite_frames), new peers are refused with HTTP 503 until the app is restarted.
• No authentication: /, /offer and /close_connection endpoints are public, see native clients ➶.

Usage Examples¶

Parameters¶

References¶

FAQs¶