Live streaming from browser

THETA Media
1

There is a service that pulls the feed via the UVC blender directly through the browser to their site. Does anyone know how they are doing that. All other solutions I read need an encoder.

2

Are they using a cloud-based encoder? What is the name of the service? It’s possible to take the dual-fisheye video stream and encode it on the server. Though, it appears to be difficult to do.

Using this same strategy, it’s possible to take the video stream in dual-fisheye, convert it in the cloud and then restream it to YouTube. These solutions are generally expensive.

There are some free services like HugVR that are popular, but don’t have the quality and reliability that some people need for professional work. https://hugvr.com/

If your application takes the lower resolution USB video live stream from the THETA, it appears like a normal webcam to your computer. You can then stream the dual-fisheye stream to your server for conversion. If you using the UVC Blender driver from RICOH (it’s free), you can stream an equirectangular video to your server and then distribute the video from there. The output from UVC Blender is 720p.

3

Thanks @codetricty. Its actually hugvr that I saw. I want to develop a web app that mimic their simplicity. Quality is not as much of an issue for my use case.

Evan Krauss

evankrauss@gmail.com mailto:evankrauss@gmail.com
(917) 727-7863

4

I think HugVR does the conversion from dual-fisheye to equirectangular on their servers. There is no open source free software that does this, though there is software that can do this in a browser. I do not know the details of HugVR, but I can ask.

The solutions that have server-side conversion from dual-fisheye to equirectangular were written by the company providing the service. The primary challenge is matching up the edges of the two spheres so that there isn’t a gap in the “joint”

If you take the stream from UVC Blender, it will be easier to build your application.

This is an old guide on UVC Blender, but it may still help to give you a feel for what it is:

http://theta360.guide/community-document/uvc-theta.html

UVC Blender is free, closed source, and runs on Windows and Mac only.

Is it okay for your application to stream to YouTube, or do you need to stream it to your own video servers?

If you’re streaming it to YouTube, I think there a need for an application that makes the streaming easier than OBS or other solutions. The differentiation for your product could be ease of use.

If you stream a dual-fisheye to a browser, here’s a some code that might help.

This is the key file: