ThingWorx Support Direct RTSP Streaming?

[JC_10557464]

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a project where we need to stream live RTSP video into a ThingWorx mashup (v 9.5).

In the past (https://community.ptc.com/t5/ThingWorx-Developers/How-to-stream-video-with-RTSP/td-p/627177), it was necessary to convert RTSP to HLS or WebRTC using a media server, but this introduces delays.

Can anyone confirm if ThingWorx now supports direct RTSP streaming, or if there are any new approaches to handle this with minimal latency?

Thanks for your help!

[Rocko · Accepted solution]

Streaming and converting video data is not a good usecase for ThingWorx, it's an IIoT platform and not a media server. ThingWorx wouldn't do anything with the data, it would just pass it through. So why burden you IIoT platform with that load? No new functionality has been implemented in that regard in TWX.

It's better to connect the video stream directly with the consuming browser, which you can do e.g. using the web frame widget as suggested before.

[JC_10557464]

Thank you for the response! We understand ThingWorx is primarily an IIoT platform, but we're using it as part of a secure vehicle tracking solution, and now incorporating video camera streams into the mix.

With a significant number of vehicles hosted on the platform, we aim to leverage ThingWorx for this purpose to maintain a centralized system.

We’re currently exploring the use of WebRTC for the conversion instead of HLS, as we’re aware of the latency issues HLS introduces. However, we’re not entirely sure if WebRTC is the best solution in this context. Any advice on whether WebRTC is a viable option or if there are better alternatives to minimize latency while maintaining integration with ThingWorx would be greatly appreciated.

[Rocko]

Can't really comment on WebRTC, but from a ThingWorx perspective, if you use it in a Web Frame widget it's basically an IFrame so no additional latency would be added. ThingWorx' role in this would simply be to manage the proper URL, the rest of the communication is between the stream provider and consumer (i.e. the browser).

Note that HLS has a low latency extension: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/http-live-streaming/enabling-low-latency-http-live-streaming-hls

[VladimirRosu]

Purely speaking about RTSP streaming in general, the issue is that this type of streaming it is not supported natively by browsers, not by ThingWorx itself.

RTSP is a very old protocol and has not received native support from browsers.

There was a technical approach in the past that involved applets (which, as a type of technology, are not used in the industry anymore due to security issues).

Due to RTSP lack of compatibility with browsers, you need a server component to do transcoding somewhere - that should not be ThingWorx.

All this is common knowledge in the internet, one such source of information is this.

[vnamboodheri]

Hello @JC_10557464, 

It looks like you have some responses from some community members. If any of these replies helped you solve your question please mark the appropriate reply as the Accepted Solution. 

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Thanks,
Vivek N.
Community Moderation Team.