General Command Line Usage

FASPStream is used to transport MPEG transport streams (TS) over long distances. On the source host, the UDP provider captures packets delivered to a local multicast or unicast UDP port. The stream is transported reliably and in order to the remote host, where it is delivered to the desired local multicast or unicast UDP port.

General Command Line Usage

$ ascp4 -m minimum_rate -l target_rate --mode=mode --host=destination_hostname --compression=none --user=username --read-threads=1 --write-threads=1 input_multicast_uri output_multicast_uri 

Recommended Rate Settings for Media Streams

ascp4 Option Description Recommendation
-m Minimum rate Take the encoding rate of the transport stream and add 1 Mbps.
-l Target rate Take the minimum rate and add 10% of the minimum rate.
For example, if the encoding rate is 10 Mbps, use the following settings:
$ ascp4 -m 11M -l 13M ...

Multicast URI Syntax

The input multicast URI and the output multicast URI uses the same syntax.
multicast_protocol_scheme://stream_ip_address:port?option=value&option=value...

The multicast protocol scheme can be either udp or mcast. If the IP address of your stream is a multicast address, FASPStream uses multicast regardless of the protocol scheme (in other words, both udp and mcast use multicast). In order to use unicast addresses, you must use the udp scheme.

You can configure properties of the stream by adding options to the URI after the question mark (?), each separated by an ampersand (&). For supported options see the table below.

Option Description Default
pktsize=packet_size Multicast packet size 1316
maxsize=maximum_size Maximum stream length No default
maxtime=maximum_time Maximum stream duration, in seconds No default
maxidle=maximum_time Maximum idle duration, in seconds No default
rcvbufsz=buffer_size Receive buffer size 10MB
sndbufsz=buffer_size Send buffer size 10MB
ifaddr=ip_address Multicast interface IP address 0.0.0.0
srcaddr=ip_address Multicast source IP address 0.0.0.0
ttl=hops Multicast time-to-live 1
loopback=boolean Multicast loopback 1

FASPStream Usage Examples