IP-to-IP transcoding solutions

[jared1999]

I work for a company that has a custom IP-to-IP transcoding solution using VLC. The input streams are MPEG-2 TS over UDP multicast, which are originally from a satellite feed. The output streams are MPEG-4 ASP in TS over UDP multicast. Audio tracks are not transcoded, and are just remuxed into the output stream.

We have had a few stability problems, and VLC (as of 0.8.6b) is unable to dynamically alter the aspect ratio based on the source during transcoding, so now we are looking for alternatives. Our requirements are as follows:


Stream (UDP multicast) and file support on both input and output.
Full TS support.
Must decode MPEG-2 video, and encode MPEG-4 ASP (and later AVC). CBR or very strict ABR.
Can preserve audio and anything else contained in the TS.


What would you recommend? An open-source and free software solution would be preferable, but anything goes (including hardware solutions).

P.S. I didn't think any of the existing forum categories fit this topic, but if one does, please move this post.

[Hellworm]

Have a look at ffserver (http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/). I Don't know any specifics, but as it's part of the ffmpeg project I assume it supports everything that ffmpeg does.

[jared1999]

Unfortunately, ffserver uses a capture card or a file as input, and multicast isn't mentioned as supported output. I guess I could pipe a stream to ffserver instead of a file. Of course, the documentation says file input is broken :p . Thanks for the suggestion though, I'll do some more research on it.