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10.
H.264 Streams
Specific cameras from IQinVision are capable of providing H.264 RTP/RTSP image and audio streams. The
requests are always made over TCP using a RTSP connection and the specifics of the content are negotiated
as defined in RFC 3984,
“
RTP Payload Format for H.264 Video.
”
These streams can be delivered using a
number of different transport protocols and are documented in the following sections.
The IQA2xx (Legacy Alliance) camera models can provide a single H.264 stream at VGA resolution. The
only transport method supported is H.264 via unicast UDP. It can also provide AAC encoded audio data from
the camera to the host. Full duplex audio is not supported.
All other IQinVision H.264 camera models can be configured to operate in either mode or stream based
operation. The following documentation will describe how to configure the H.264 encoders and how to
request image data from these cameras.
10.1.
Requesting H.264 image data
There are several different underlying protocols that can be used when requesting an H.264 stream using
RTSP/RTP. Using a TCP based connection will result in a more reliable data stream, especially over Wide
Area Network (WAN) connections, but places additional overhead on the host system. Using UDP is most
efficient, but lost packets are not handled and images can be corrupted.
When configuring network firewalls, the following ports must be opened for H.264 connections.
H.264 via unicast UDP: TCP port 554 is used for the RTSP control connection.
The data is
transmitted via UDP and the actual UDP port is negotiated.
IQinVision cameras start the negotiation
on UDP port 6970 for audio and 6972 for video.
If the requested UDP port is busy it is incremented
by one and requesting until the UDP port gets successfully bound.
H.264 via multicast UDP: The port is configured by the user and the switches/routers must be
configured to support the selected multicast group.
H.264 over TCP:
The RTSP and data connections are transmitted on TCP port 554.
H.264 via TCP over HTTP: The RTSP and data connections are transmitted over TCP port 80.
10.1.1.
Unicast/Multicast UDP or TCP stream
To request an H.264 stream via Unicast UDP, Multicast UDP or Unicast TCP, request a RTSP connection
using the camera base IP address:
rtsp://<camera_ip>/now.mp4
Once the RTSP connection has been established the specific transport mechanism and H.264 request must
then be negotiated using the protocol established in RFC 3984.