[vlc] multicat: multicast transport stream

[Sameer Naik]

Hello,

I need to multicast a mpeg transport stream file over UDP (not RTP) so
that it can be played back on my STB. I used to do this using VLC, but
vlc would manipulate the stream and change the stream pids, not send
all the streams, specifically the epg data streams. Using vlc i was
able to stream all audio and video streams but the pid values would be
changed by VLC.

Looking for an alternative, I found multicat. So i downloaded and
installed the software. I used the 'ingests' program to generate the
.aux file after providing the PCR pid. Next i launched multicat like
so:

$ multicat file.mpegts 224.0.0.20:1234

I launched VLC and opened the network stream rtp://224.0.0.20:1234.
VLC was able to play the stream that was being multicast using
multicat. Now i want to stream the content over plain UDP. I am noy
sure multicat allows me to do that. I tried streaming the file using
the following command.

$ multicat -U file.mpegts 224.0.0.20:1234
'-U: destination has no RTP header'

But no luck. VLC was not able to play anything when i tried to open
the stream udp://224.0.0.20:1234

I am wondering whether this can be done in multicat. Or whether it can
be done using a combination of tools.
One of the things i tried was streaming the file to my localhost over
RTP and using dvblast to receive that stream and stream it over udp
like so:

shell 1:

$ multicat MBC-4-EPG.mpg 127.0.0.1:1234

shell 2:
$ dvblast -D 127.0.0.1:1234 -e -d 224.0.0.20:1234

With these two commands i was able to receive the RTP stream in
DVBlast and the multicast it using RTP to 224.0.0.20:1234. VLC was
able to playback this stream. Next i tried adding the the '-U' flag to
dvblast:

shell 2:
$ dvblast -D 127.0.0.1:1234 -e -U -d 224.0.0.20:1234

But again VLC does not playback the stream located at udp://224.0.0.20:1234.

Please help.
Looking forward to your response.

P.S.:
VLC 1.1.9 on Windows XP
multicat 1.0 on Linux (Fedora 14)
dvblast 1.2 on Linux (Fedora 14)

Thanks and Regards.
Sameer