2
votes

I have a strange problem, I'm working on a Bluetooth camera we want to provide an mjpeg interface to the world.

Mjpeg is just an http server replying one jpeg after the other with the connection keept open. My server is right now giving me:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Cache-Directive: no-cache
Expires: 0
Pragma-Directive: no-cache
Server: TwistedWeb/10.0.0
Connection: Keep-Alive
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate;
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:29:56 GMT
Content-Type: multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=myBOUNDARY

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Cache-Directive: no-cache
Expires: 0
Pragma-Directive: no-cache
Server: TwistedWeb/10.0.0
Connection: Keep-Alive
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate;
Cate: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:29:56 GMT
Content-Type: multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=myBOUNDARY

And then for each frame:

--myBOUNDARY
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-Size: 25992

BINARY JPEG CONTENT.....
(new line)

I made a Flash client for it, so we can use the same code on any device, the server is implemented in Python using twisted and is targeting Android among others, problem in Android is Google forgot to include mjpeg support.... This client is using URLStream.

The code is this:

package net.aircable {
  import flash.errors.*;
  import flash.events.*;
  import flash.net.URLRequest;
  import flash.net.URLRequestMethod;
  import flash.net.URLRequestHeader;
  import flash.net.URLStream;
  import flash.utils.ByteArray;
  import flash.utils.Dictionary;
  import flash.system.Security;
  import mx.utils.Base64Encoder;
  import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
  import net.aircable.XHRMultipartEvent;

  public class XHRMultipart extends EventDispatcher{

    private function trc(what: String): void{
        //ExternalInterface.call("console.log", what); //for android
        trace(what);
    }

    private var uri: String;
    private var username: String;
    private var password: String;
    private var stream: URLStream;
    private var buffer: ByteArray;
    private var pending: int;
    private var flag: Boolean;
    private var type: String;
    private var browser: String;

    private function connect(): void {
      stream = new URLStream();
      trc("connect")
      var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(uri);
      request.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
      request.contentType = "multipart/x-mixed-replace";
      trc(request.contentType)
/*      request.requestHeaders = new Array(
        new URLRequestHeader("Content-type", "multipart/x-mixed-replace"),
        new URLRequestHeader("connection", "keep-alive"),
        new URLRequestHeader("keep-alive", "115"));
*/
      trace(request.requestHeaders);
      trc("request.requestHeaders")
      configureListeners();
      try {
        trc("connecting");
        stream.load(request);
        trc("connected")
      } catch (error:Error){
          trc("Unable to load requested resource");
      }
      this.pending = 0;
      this.flag = false;
      this.buffer = new ByteArray();
    }

    public function XHRMultipart(uri: String = null, 
                                        username: String = null, 
                                        password: String = null){
      trc("XHRMultipart()");
      var v : String = ExternalInterface.call("function(){return navigator.appVersion+'-'+navigator.appName;}");
      trc(v);
      v=v.toLowerCase();
      if (v.indexOf("chrome") > -1){
        browser="chrome";
      } else if (v.indexOf("safari") > -1){
        browser="safari";
      }
      else {
        browser=null;
      }
      trc(browser);
      if (uri == null)
        uri = "../stream?ohhworldIhatethecrap.mjpeg";
      this.uri = uri;
      connect();
    }


    private function configureListeners(): void{
      stream.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeHandler, false, 0, true);
      stream.addEventListener(HTTPStatusEvent.HTTP_STATUS, httpStatusHandler, false, 0, true);
      stream.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, ioErrorHandler, false, 0, true);
      stream.addEventListener(Event.OPEN, openHandler, false, 0, true);
      stream.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, progressHandler, false, 0, true);
      stream.addEventListener(SecurityErrorEvent.SECURITY_ERROR, securityErrorHandler, false, 0, true);
    }

    private function propagatePart(out: ByteArray, type: String): void{
        trc("found " + out.length + " mime: " + type);
        dispatchEvent(new XHRMultipartEvent(XHRMultipartEvent.GOT_DATA, true, false, out));
    }

    private function readLine(): String {
        var out: String = "";
        var temp: String;

        while (true){
            if (stream.bytesAvailable == 0)
                break;
            temp = stream.readUTFBytes(1);
            if (temp == "\n")
                break;
            out+=temp;
        }
        return out;
    }

    private function extractHeader(): void {
        var line: String;
        var headers: Object = {};
        var head: Array;

        while ( (line=readLine()) != "" ){
            if ( stream.bytesAvailable == 0)
                return;
            if (line.indexOf('--') > -1){
                continue;
            }
            head = line.split(":");
            if (head.length==2){
                headers[head[0].toLowerCase()]=head[1];
            }
        }

        pending=int(headers["content-size"]);
        type = headers["content-type"];
        if ( pending > 0 && type != null)
            flag = true;
        trc("pending: " + pending + " type: " + type);
    }

    private function firefoxExtract(): void {
        trc("firefoxPrepareToExtract");
        if (stream.bytesAvailable == 0){
            trc("No more bytes, aborting")
            return;
        }

        while ( flag == false ) {
            if (stream.bytesAvailable == 0){
                trc("No more bytes, aborting - can't extract headers");
                return;
            }
            extractHeader()
        }

        trc("so far have: " + stream.bytesAvailable);
        trc("we need: " + pending);
        if (stream.bytesAvailable =0; x-=1){
            buffer.position=x;
            buffer.readBytes(temp, 0, 2);
            // check if we found end marker
            if (temp[0]==0xff && temp[1]==0xd9){
                end=x;
                break;
            }
        }

        trc("findImageInBuffer, start: " + start + " end: " + end);
        if (start >-1 && end > -1){
            var output: ByteArray = new ByteArray();
            buffer.position=start;
            buffer.readBytes(output, 0 , end-start);
            propagatePart(output, type);
            buffer.position=0; // drop everything
            buffer.length=0;
        }
    }

    private function safariExtract(): void {
        trc("safariExtract()");
        stream.readBytes(buffer, buffer.length);
        findImageInBuffer();
    }

    private function chromeExtract(): void {
        trc("chromeExtract()");
        stream.readBytes(buffer, buffer.length);
        findImageInBuffer();
    }

    private function extractImage(): void {
        trc("extractImage");

        if (browser == null){
            firefoxExtract();
        }
        else if (browser == "safari"){
            safariExtract();
        }
        else if (browser == "chrome"){
            chromeExtract();
        }
    }

    private function isCompressed():Boolean {
        return (stream.readUTFBytes(3) == ZLIB_CODE);
    }

    private function completeHandler(event:Event):void {
        trc("completeHandler: " + event);
        //extractImage();
        //connect();
    }

    private function openHandler(event:Event):void {
        trc("openHandler: " + event);
    }

    private function progressHandler(event:ProgressEvent):void {
        trc("progressHandler: " + event)
        trc("available: " + stream.bytesAvailable);
        extractImage();
        if (event.type == ProgressEvent.PROGRESS)
            if (event.bytesLoaded > 1048576) { //1*1024*1024 bytes = 1MB
                trc("transfered " + event.bytesLoaded +" closing")
                stream.close();
                connect();
            }
    }

    private function securityErrorHandler(event:SecurityErrorEvent):void {
        trc("securityErrorHandler: " + event);
    }

    private function httpStatusHandler(event:HTTPStatusEvent):void {
        trc("httpStatusHandler: " + event);
        trc("available: " + stream.bytesAvailable);
        extractImage();
        //connect();
    }

    private function ioErrorHandler(event:IOErrorEvent):void {
        trc("ioErrorHandler: " + event);
    }

  }
};

The client is working quite well on Firefox where I get all the http header:

--myBOUNDARY
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-Size: 25992

So I use content-size to know how many bytes to go ahead. Same happens in IE8 (even buggy IE is compatible!)

On Safari it works a bit differently (maybe it's webkit doing it) I don't get the http piece just the Binary content, which forces me to search over the buffer for the start and end of frame.

Problem is Chrome, believe or not, it's not working. Something weird is going on, apparently I get the first tcp/ip package and then for some reason Chrome decides to close the connection, the output of the log is this:

XHRMultipart()
5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.114 Safari/534.16-Netscape
chrome
connect
multipart/x-mixed-replace

request.requestHeaders
connecting
connected
openHandler: [Event type="open" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2]
openHandler: [Event type="open" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2]
progressHandler: [ProgressEvent type="progress" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 bytesLoaded=3680 bytesTotal=0]
available: 3680
extractImage
chromeExtract()
findImageInBuffer, start: 0 end: -1
httpStatusHandler: [HTTPStatusEvent type="httpStatus" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 status=200 responseURL=null]
available: 0
extractImage
chromeExtract()
findImageInBuffer, start: 0 end: -1

I shouldn't be getting httpStatus until the server closes the connection which is not the case here.

Please don't tell me to use HTML5 Canvas or Video I all ready been that way, problem is we want this application to run in many OSes and compiling a video encoder for all them (ffmpeg for example) will not make the work any easier. Also we want to provide with SCO audio which is just a PCM stream, so I can't use plain mjpeg. Canvas is too slow, I tested that, specially on Android.

2
I fixed the code a very little to make it compatible now even with Konqueror. My main problem is that I'm no AS3 expert, I come from Python world, have some dark Java background, and some C/C++ as well.manuelnaranjo

2 Answers

3
votes

Finally I found the problem!

Content-type is wrong according to Chrome's flash plugin, the correct one is: Content-Type: multipart/x-mixed-replace

And not Content-Type: multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=myBOUNDARY

So my server now sends or not the boundary depending on a request argument.

1
votes

That didn't work for me either - eventually I got it working in chrome using:

Content-Type: text/html;boundary=--myboundary

There goes 6 hours of my life :(