Sa'habuntu Live CD

From Giss

Context And Goals

This task aims at providing an up-to-date and complete live CD made for streaming. In G.I.S.S. 2.0, a first version has been made, and is usable for most streaming situations, see Sa'habuntu Live CD version 0.11, it must now be adapted and completed with ad-hoc tools and howtos.

Work achieved

The decision has been taken to base the new release on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, the CD will mainly be produced for i686 in 32-bits mode.

Testing of streaming tools

The team has tested the streaming tools on Ubuntu Hardy and the results are as follows :

State of the Streaming Tools on Ubuntu Hardy
Tool State Remarks
Theora Streaming Studio ( ffmpeg2theora ) Button-ok.jpg Works with DV, and with webcams with the ffmpeg-giss package ( SVN r7968 ).
MuSE Button-ok.jpg Works with ogg files, not with mp3s.
IDJC Button-ok.jpg Very complete solution for audio streaming. Works with jack and, thus, with external applications.
Pure Data Button-ok.jpg The most versatile tool to stream audio and video.
Gstreamer Button-ok.jpg Works in command line ( complicated ), we will develop a simple streaming interface using the bindings to Python.
Freej Button-failed.jpg Problems with javascript engine and very difficult to configure and control.
VLC Client Button-failed.jpg The GUI seems unusable and the stream very unstable and error prone.


A list of now available streaming tools is here  : Streaming Tools

Some video editing tools have been tested also with success : Cinelerra, Kino, ...

Development of streaming tools

  • We developped new modules for pd/pdp ( pdp_v4l2, pdp_ieee1394 ) to support more cameras drivers natively.
  • The Pd patches have been improved to include mixing and recording fonctionalities.
  • A development of an interface for GStreamer has been achieved, it comes in three python scripts, two for webcams ( v4l and v4l2 ) and one for digital cameras ( firewire ) :

webcamstream-v4l.py Media:webcamstream-v4l.pys: gstreamer script to stream from a v4l webcam

webcamstream-v4l2.py Media:webcamstream-v4l2.pys: gstreamer script to stream from a v4l2 webcam

dvstream.py Media:dvstream.pys : gstreamer script to stream from a digital camera ( firewire )

these scripts are also available as an ubuntu package named pygiss, see following section to see how to get it.


Setting up of a package repository

  • Some packages of our tools have been installed in a debian repository for ubuntu / hardy ( 32 bits ) :

deb http://giss.tv/~chevil/ubuntu32 hardy giss

it also exists for 64 bits ( architecture amd64 ) :

deb http://giss.tv/~chevil/ubuntu64 hardy giss

it now contains the following packages :

theorastreamer : Theora Streaming Studio

pd-giss : an extended package of Pure Data, based on pd 0.41

pygiss : gstreamer scripts for streaming 

Once you will have installed these packages for your architecture, you will need to uncompress the Giss Icons on your Desktop.

Sa'habuntu 3.0 rc1 release

The Sa'habuntu 3.0 first release candidate has been released as of the 1st of September 2008, it looks like this :

Sahabuntu-desktop.png

You can download it here : download sa'habuntu 3.0 rc1

The md5sum is : 2c20667c8244fe0bafa50c0c25e09beb

Documentation and howtos has been added, you can also check the documentation on-line here : Sa'habuntu documentation

You can send comments and report bugs at gissnetwork at gmail dot com.

Sa'habuntu 3.0 rc2 update

After some tests led in India on various graphic cards ( mainly ATI ), some video card detection problems have been fixed and has lead to the publication of Sa'habuntu 3.0 RC2.

You can download it here : download sa'habuntu 3.0 rc2

The md5sum is : de338e5af7ddaeadf4c2478568061ea9

sahabuntu v 3.0 rc3 bugfix ( 10/01/2009 )

Some problems in the installation process have been detected in recent workshop ( missing openGL extensions on some video cards, missing programs ), these have been fixed in the rc3 release : download sa'habuntu 3.0 rc3

The md5sum is : 5ae9cf5cb0c850770493483feff2db59

As usual, send comments and report bugs at gissnetwork at gmail dot com.