Lifesize has once again made a splash, announcing the Icon 700, their first 4K-capable video conference end-point. They’re taking pre-orders for the device, which marries a 4K PTZ camera with a 20x zoom lens, with the ability to drive dual,…
Remember the El Gato CamLink? I reviewed it in the summer of 2017 when it initially launched. This week it seems that El Gato, now a division of Corsair, has released an upgraded version, CamLink 4K. The new 4K models…
While the pace has definitely slowed, this blog is rolling into its 11th year. That’s a long time running Wordpress. Around 1,250 posts. I revisit this as Wordpress 5 is about to ship, along with the new Gutenberg editor. The…
This has come up a lot recently and it’s a little counter-intuitive. There are times when an older video capture device, using USB 2.0, is actually better than new new one that leverages faster USB 3.0 or 3.1. The reason…
After carrying Nexus phones for years I bought a Google Pixel in December 2016. That was just after the Pixel 2 was released, so the older Pixel was priced well and still offered great performance.
I was very pleased with the Pixel until quite recently. The OTA update to Android 9 (Pie) in August has been a huge step backward. Since that update the phone’s battery life has been dramatically reduced. Where it once lasted all day with my typical usage, it now lasts only about 7 hours with only light usage. Further, the phone is often noticeably warm to the touch.
Being the inquisitive sort, I’ve done some experiments to try and find out why this is happening. There are no rogue apps running. Or at least the OS reports no app using more that 2-3% of battery power.
I put the phone in Safe Mode for a day so only the factory installed apps would run. Battery life remained abysmal. That suggests that the problem is not caused by an app at all.
I’ve come to believe that I’ve identified the source of the problem. It’s related to the Wi-Fi. If I turn off the Wi-Fi the battery life is closer to what was experiencing running Oreo. Turn it back on and it plummets.
This post arises from a question posed by someone via Quora. I’m not all that engaged with that Q&A platform, but this question seemed novel, so I offered an answer. I thought the answer worth sharing in a little more depth, so I offer it here as well.
The question was, “How can I use the RTSP stream from an IP camera as a source for a WebRTC application?”
There are two parts to solving this puzzle; (1) Connect to the RTSP stream and (2) Make it appear like a webcam to the client application.
At the outset, let me say that I would address this using vMix. vMix solves both parts of the puzzle handily. If this is all that you needed to achieve, the $60 Basic HD license would suffice.
Of course, you’d need to learn a little about the application, which is deep. To my mind it’s fun, but some might find it daunting. Further, vMix requires a considerable host platform. You’re not going to run it on trivial hardware.
Let’s just say that we’d like to solve the problem with less spending and requiring less knowledge overhead.
VLC is the ubiquitous, open source media player. Available on all platforms it can play anything I’ve every wanted to open. Beyond files, it can open network streams. I’ve used it to listen to my local PBS radio station. I’ve also used it to watch video streams from our Grandstream surveillance cameras, as shown below.
NDI stands for Network Device Interface. It’s a network protocol, developed by Newtek of TriCaster and Video Toaster fame, that allows low-latency, lightly compressed video to be passed over a gigabit Ethernet network. NDI is impressive, but I won’t wax poetic about that here.