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Downloading and building the H264 Streaming Module for Lighttpd (version 2)

Downloading and building the H264 Streaming Module for Lighttpd (version …

Dependencies

To make sure you have all dependencies (configuration files, startup scripts) installed it's best to first install Lighttpd via 'apt-get'.

sudo apt-get install lighttpd

Download Lighttpd 1.4.18

Download the source of Lighttpd and the H264 Streaming Module.

cd ~
wget http://h264.code-shop.com/download/lighttpd-1.4.18_mod_h264_streaming-2.2.9.tar.gz
tar -zxvf lighttpd-1.4.18_mod_h264_streaming-2.2.9.tar.gz

Download Lighttpd 1.4.19 & 1.4.20 (and other 1.4.x)

Follow the instructions for 'Download Lighttpd 1.4.18' first. Then continue with the following steps.

Download a source distribution (e.g. 1.4.20.prerelease r2303), build and install your version of Lighttpd (from the official site) as you would do normally.

The following instructions are basically a copy of the Lighttpd's page of How to add a Lighttpd plugin.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have automake 1.9 (required by autogen.sh), autoconf 2.59 and libtool 1.5.x.

Files

Copy the module's files from the 1.4.18 source distribution to your source distribution (lighttpd-1.4.x).

cp lighttpd-1.4.18/src/mod_h264_streaming.c lighttpd-1.4.x/src/
cp lighttpd-1.4.18/src/mod_streaming_export.h lighttpd-1.4.x/src/
... see below for a list of all the files to copy ...
cp lighttpd-1.4.18/src/output_mp4.* lighttpd-1.4.x/src/

Makefile

First you add the following to the lighttpd-1.4.x/src/Makefile.am file:

lib_LTLIBRARIES += mod_h264_streaming.la
mod_h264_streaming_la_SOURCES = mod_h264_streaming.c \
                                mod_streaming_export.h \
                                moov.c moov.h \
                                mp4_io.c mp4_io.h \
                                mp4_reader.c mp4_reader.h \
                                mp4_writer.c mp4_writer.h \
                                mp4_process.c mp4_process.h \
                                output_bucket.c output_bucket.h \
                                output_mp4.c output_mp4.h
mod_h264_streaming_la_CFLAGS = $(AM_CFLAGS) -DBUILDING_H264_STREAMING
mod_h264_streaming_la_LDFLAGS = -module -export-dynamic -avoid-version -no-undefined
mod_h264_streaming_la_LIBADD = $(common_libadd)

(for example, just after 'mod_flv_streaming')

Then, you type this:

./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-maintainer-mode --prefix=${HOME}/test/lighttpd-1.4.x

in the lighttpd-1.4.x directory. The 'enable-maintainer-mode will trigger a rebuild of all makefiles by autoconf ...

Note: You may not see the plugin listed in the 'Plugins: enabled:' list. No reason to worry.

After this you are all set and should type 'make && make install' - the exe+libs will be installed in ${HOME}/test/lighttpd-1.4.x.

Download Lighttpd 1.5.0

cd ~
wget http://h264.code-shop.com/download/lighttpd-1.5.0_mod_h264_streaming-2.2.9.tar.gz
tar -zxvf lighttpd-1.5.0_mod_h264_streaming-2.2.9.tar.gz

Build

Run configure in the Lighttpd directory.

cd ~/lighttpd-1.4.18
./configure

Make and install Lighttpd.

make
sudo make install

Configuration

Edit the configuration file (in /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf) so that file requests ending in ".mp4" are handled by the mod_h264_streaming module.

server.modules = ( 
  ...,
  "mod_h264_streaming",
  ...
)
h264-streaming.extensions = ( ".mp4" )

Make sure that DAEMON in your startup script (/etc/init.d/lighttpd) is set to point to the locally build version.

DAEMON=/usr/local/sbin/lighttpd

Start Lighttpd

sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd start

Advanced configuration

Two other modules that you may consider using are mod_expire and mod_secdownload. The order of the modules in your configuration is important. If you are using mod_secdownload to prevent hotlinking of your mp4 files make sure that it is included before the mod_h264_streaming in the module list.

server.modules = (
  "mod_expire",
  "mod_secdownload",
  "mod_h264_streaming",
  etc...
}

Bandwidth shaping is enabled by setting the h264-streaming.buffer-seconds option.

# Files ending in .mp4 and .f4v are served by the module
h264-streaming.extensions = ( ".mp4", ".f4v" )
# The number of seconds after which the bandwidth is shaped (defaults to 0=disable)
h264-streaming.buffer-seconds = 10

Also add an Expires/Cache-Control header for your video files, so video files can be cached by webbrowsers or a CDN provider.

# Add Expires/Cache-Control header
$HTTP["url"] =~ "\.(mp4|f4v)$" {
  expire.url = ( "" => "access 8 hours" )
}

Use mod_secdownload to prevent hotlinking.

secdownload.secret          = "secret"
secdownload.document-root   = "/var/www/video/"
secdownload.uri-prefix      = "/video/"
secdownload.timeout         = 3600

License

This version is free if you agree to the noncommercial license. Please mention its use on your website, in the lines of 'This website uses H264 pseudo video streaming technology by CodeShop'.

Our commercial license is very inexpensive, see the following page to check if you need a commercial license.

Testing

Continue to the testing page to verify your setup.

Demo

See http://h264.code-shop.com:8080/testlist.html for a demo running Lighttpd 1.5.0.

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