AppWebStream

Windows Media Foundation and FFMPEG sample code for streaming an application window to a web browser. The video is encoded as a H.264 stream inside a fragmented MPEG4 container that is Media Source Extensions (MSE) compatible, so that it can be received by modern web browsers with minimal client-side buffering.

Getting started

• Open project in Visual Studio
• Build project
• Start WebAppStream.exe port [window handle]. You can use Spy++ (included with Visual Studio) to determine window handles.
• Open http://localhost:port in web browser, or on another computer. The stream can also be opened as http://localhost:port/movie.mp4 in VLC media player.

To build with FFMPG, you first need to download & unzip FFMPEG binaries to a folder pointed to by the FFMPEG_ROOT environment variable. Then, set the ENABLE_FFMPEG preprocessor define before building.

Outstanding tasks:

• Authentication is currently missing.
• The handcrafted HTTP communication should be replaced by a "proper" HTTP library.

Media Foundation details

• 0-1 frame latency (1st frame in, no output, 2nd frame in, 1st frame out, 3rd frame in, 2nd frame out, 4th frame in, 3rd frame out, 4th frame out, ...)
• The MPEG4 container is manually modified as suggested in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49429954/mfcreatefmpeg4mediasink-does-not-generate-mse-compatible-mp4 to make it Media Source Extensions (MSE) compatible.

The FFMPEG-based encoder is not affected by this issue.

Browser support

• Confirmed to work with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox.
• Safary doesn't work properly yet. The movie is streamed, but not show on screen. Don't understand why.