ACKspace / pausenkatzen

Multicast pollution if there is no active conference

pausenkatzen

Multicast pollution if there is no active conference

synopsis

read Chaos Communication Congress/Camp schedule and set up multicast streams for each room/stage. Transmit a random video from a pool when there is no talk broadcasted (also known as 'pausenkatzen' or: 'intermission cats').

prerequisites

• VLC media player (preferrably version < 2.2, see notes)
• local collection of video material
• python (python3 in the works)
• python libraries (some are packaged with python):
  • cairo (for Mosaic)
  • collections
  • datetime (for CccStreamIndexer)
  • dateutil (for CccStreamIndexer)
  • glob
  • icalendar (for IcsStreamIndexer)
  • json
  • math (for Mosaic)
  • numpy (for Mosaic)
  • random
  • requests (for CccStreamIndexer)
  • rsvg (for Mosaic)
  • threading
  • time
  • vlc

setup

• install vlc and the python-vlc module/package
• clone this repository git clone https://github.com/ACKspace/pausenkatzen.git
• go into the pausenkatzen directory
• initialize the submodule git submodule update --init --recursive
• edit pausenkatzen.py: verify that
  • VideoPool points to an existing directory containing videos
  • StreamIndexer points to a current CCC schedule
  • Streamer points to a corresponding working stream (note that {} will be replaced by a number, increased for each new stream)
• run python pausenkatzen.py

notes

• every time a new video is injected to transmit, the multicast will hiccup and buffer for a couple of seconds; short videos will not have the desired effect you were looking for.
• with trial and error, we came to conclusion that VLC >= 3.x has issues with HLS streams, VLC >= 2.2 has issues with creating the mosaic.