Display streaming media content

Applies to: HMP400/HMP400W with DSOS SYSTEMS license, HMP350, HMP200, HMP130, and HMP100 devices.

Description

This tutorial explains how to include streaming media content (for instance, a TV channel, the output of a IP camera etc.) in your Elementi project in order to display it on the HMP.

• Difficulty: Easy / Medium.
• Total duration: Variable.
• Requirements:
  • A streaming media source compliant with the HMP specification. See Streaming and Video decoding pages for more details.
  • Elementi (the latest version is recommended).
  • One or more HMP devices (except for HMP300) using firmware 3.x or later. The latest version is recommended.

Prepare the streaming media source

The first and probably the most difficult step is to prepare the streaming media source. For instance, to display a TV channel on the HMP, you need to use a dedicated hardware that takes the TV signal and stream it over the network using UDP or RTP (with or without RTSP on top). See also the list of encoders and streamers that have been tested with the HMP.

Here are the general steps to follow:

1. Set up your streamer / encoder for network streaming.
2. Select the video / audio settings for the stream output according to the target HMP specification. See Video decoding page for more details.
3. Select the stream output format. The RTSP, RTP, UDP and SDP streaming protocols are supported by the HMP.
4. Start streaming on the network.
5. Optionally, test the streaming media within a multimedia player (for instance with VLC player).

Note:

You can also use public streaming sources from the Internet, though it is not very easy to find one that is compliant with the HMP specification, and they are not very reliable. Sharing websites, like YouTube, cannot be used because they are using unsupported streaming protocols.

Include the streaming media inside the content

Once you have the streaming media source ready, things get really easy:

1. Start Elementi and open a project.
   • If you need to create a new project, "My first Elementi project" tutorial might also come in handy.
   • The project's main file should be automatically opened, otherwise, double-click on the index.svg icon in Browse panel.
2. Add a new streaming layer using the "Add Streaming Layer" button on the toolbar.
   

   Add a streaming layer
   • Alternatively, right-click within the Edit panel and select "Insert Streaming Layer".
3. Enter the stream URI (as RTSP, RTP, or UDP address) within the pop-up dialog.

   Here are some examples of such addresses:

   • rtsp://172.21.1.75:3049/S1 (local streaming device via rtsp)
   • rtsp://172.21.3.120/axis-media/media.amp (local streaming server via rtsp)
   • rtp://239.192.3.111:5000 (local streaming server via multicast rtp)
   • udp://239.255.1.6:59012 (local streaming server via multicast udp)
   • rtsp://wowzaec2demo.streamlock.net/vod/mp4:BigBuckBunny_115k.mp4 (external Wowza streaming server via rtsp)

4. For external RTSP sources, the "Use TCP transport ... " option might need to be activated if the stream is not displayed.
   • Elementi 3.x does not have this option, therefore the spx:transport attribute can be manually set to "tcp" from Layer Properties > Advanced tab.
5. Click the "OK" button. A video layer is added to the list of layers.
6. Test that the streaming media plays fine within Elementi.
7. Position the new layer within the Preview panel and / or fine tune its properties using the Layer Properties dialog.
8. Save the changes to your project.

Notes:

• When using audio-only streaming media, the layer should be changed to audio - for that, click to open the "Layer Properties" dialog, go to "Advanced tab" and set the "type" attribute to "audio/mpeg" or "audio/x-ms-asf".
• To suppress the rotating dots' animation while connecting to a streaming source, click , go to "Advanced tab" and set the "spx:silent" attribute to "true".

Display the content on the screen

Finally, let's see the streaming media on the screen:

1. Publish the project on the HMP device(s).
2. Test that the streaming media plays fine on the HMP device(s).