MPEG-TS client for the WebRTC-HTTP ingestion protocol

November 10, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

MPEG-TS ingestion client for WHIP (https://github.com/Eyevinn/whip). Ingests an MPEG-TS unicast or multicast or SRT stream and sends it to a WHIP endpoint.

Getting started

Supported platforms are Ubuntu 22.04+ and OSX.

Install binary

Homebrew:

brew install eyevinn/tools/whip-mpegts

Usage

Usage: whip-mpegts [OPTION]
  -a, --udpSourceAddress STRING
  -p, --udpSourcePort INT
  -u, --whipEndpointUrl STRING
  -k, --whipEndpointAuthKey STRING
  -d, --udpSourceQueueMinTime INT ms
  -r, --restreamAddress STRING
  -o, --restreamPort INT
  -b, --h264EncodeBitrate INT kb
  -t, --showTimer
  -s, --srtTransport
  -m, --srtMode INT (1=caller, 2=listener, default=2)
  --tsDemuxLatency INT
  --jitterBufferLatency INT
  --srtSourceLatency INT
  --no-audio
  --no-video
  --bypass-audio
  --bypass-video

Flags:

  • -t Enable burned in timer
  • -s Enable SRT transport for receiving MPEG-TS and also use SRT when restreaming
  • -m Set SRT mode: 1 for caller (connect to remote), 2 for listener (wait for connection, default)
  • --bypass-video Skip video transcoding. Only works with H264.
  • --bypass-audio Skip audio transcoding. Only works with OPUS.

Quick Start

To play out a testing stream and watch it in browser, we can use Broadcast Box.

Example 1: SRT Listener Mode (default)

# Generate a testing stream with GStreamer as SRT caller
gst-launch-1.0 -v \
    videotestsrc ! clockoverlay ! video/x-raw, height=360, width=640 ! videoconvert ! x264enc tune=zerolatency ! video/x-h264, profile=constrained-baseline ! mux. \
    audiotestsrc ! audio/x-raw, format=S16LE, channels=2, rate=44100 ! audioconvert ! voaacenc ! aacparse ! mux. \
    mpegtsmux name=mux ! queue ! srtsink uri="srt://127.0.0.1:9998?mode=caller" wait-for-connection=false

# Start whip-mpegts in listener mode (waits for incoming connection)
./whip-mpegts -a "127.0.0.1" -p 9998 -u "https://b.siobud.com/api/whip" -k "testingstream123" -s

Example 2: SRT Caller Mode

# Generate a testing stream with FFmpeg as SRT listener
ffmpeg -re -f lavfi -i testsrc=size=1280x720:rate=30 -f lavfi -i sine=frequency=1000:sample_rate=48000 \
    -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -b:v 2000k -c:a aac -b:a 128k \
    -f mpegts "srt://127.0.0.1:9998?mode=listener"

# Start whip-mpegts in caller mode (connects to remote endpoint)
./whip-mpegts -s -m 1 -a "127.0.0.1" -p 9998 -u "https://b.siobud.com/api/whip" -k "testingstream123"

Open Broadcast Box in browser and type in the same Stream Key (e.g., testingstream123) and click "Watch Stream".

Debugging

Pipeline State Debugging

You can generate GStreamer pipeline dot files for debugging by setting the GST_DEBUG_DUMP_DOT_DIR environment variable. When this variable is set, the application will install a SIGHUP signal handler that allows you to dump the current pipeline state on demand.

Setup:

# Create a directory for dot files
mkdir -p /tmp/gst-dots

# Set the environment variable
export GST_DEBUG_DUMP_DOT_DIR=/tmp/gst-dots

# Run whip-mpegts
./whip-mpegts -a "127.0.0.1" -p 9998 -u "https://b.siobud.com/api/whip" -k "testingstream123"

Trigger pipeline state dump:

While the application is running, send a SIGHUP signal to dump the current pipeline state:

# Find the process ID
ps aux | grep whip-mpegts

# Send SIGHUP signal
kill -SIGHUP <pid>

This will create a pipeline-sighup.dot file in the directory specified by GST_DEBUG_DUMP_DOT_DIR. You can convert the dot file to an image:

# Convert to PNG
dot -Tpng /tmp/gst-dots/pipeline-sighup.dot -o pipeline.png

# Convert to SVG
dot -Tsvg /tmp/gst-dots/pipeline-sighup.dot -o pipeline.svg

Note: If GST_DEBUG_DUMP_DOT_DIR is not set, the SIGHUP handler will not be installed.

Build Ubuntu/Debian

Install dependencies:

apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-0 gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-rtp gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-nice libsoup-3.0-0 cmake gcc g++ make gdb libglib2.0-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-dev libsoup-3.0-dev pkg-config

Build:

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G "Unix Makefiles" .
make

Build OSX

Requirements:

XCode command line tools installed.

Install additional dependencies using homebrew:

brew install gstreamer gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad libsoup cmake gst-libav

On Apple M1 you might need to build the gst-plugins-bad from source as the SRT plugins are not available in the binary bottle.

brew reinstall --build-from-source gst-plugins-bad

Build:

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G "Unix Makefiles" .
make

Notes: For HTTPS requests, GLIB (libsoup) requires some environment variables:

export GLIB_NETWORKING=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/glib-networking/2.78.0
export GIO_MODULE_DIR=${GLIB_NETWORKING}/lib/gio/modules/

Build Docker Container

Build container (uses multi-stage builds):

docker build -t mpegts-whip:dev .

Run container (example):

docker run --rm -p <MPEG-TS port>:<MPEG-TS port>/udp mpegts-whip:dev -a <MPEG-TS address> -p <MPEG-TS port> -u http://<WHIP endpoint URL> -k [WHIP auth key]

License (Apache-2.0)

Copyright 2022 Eyevinn Technology AB

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

Support

Join our community on Slack where you can post any questions regarding any of our open source projects. Eyevinn's consulting business can also offer you:

  • Further development of this component
  • Customization and integration of this component into your platform
  • Support and maintenance agreement

Contact sales@eyevinn.se if you are interested.

About Eyevinn Technology

Eyevinn Technology is an independent consultant firm specialized in video and streaming. Independent in a way that we are not commercially tied to any platform or technology vendor. As our way to innovate and push the industry forward we develop proof-of-concepts and tools. The things we learn and the code we write we share with the industry in blogs and by open sourcing the code we have written.

Want to know more about Eyevinn and how it is to work here. Contact us at work@eyevinn.se!