Why I can't receive a live555 RTSP stream into a QVideoWidget? - qt

Question

I am trying to stream a H.264 video stream from a live555 server to a client application that displays it using QVideoWidget on Windows (Qt 5.5)
Unfortunately, the QVideoWidget does not show anything (but it does show videos that start with http:// instead of rtsp://).
If I sniff the packets I can see that the server is returned a 405 Method not allowed:
GET /testStream HTTP/1.0
Host: 172.19.217.147
User-Agent: NSPlayer/12.00.7601.17514
Accept: /
Accept-Language: en-us, *;q=0.1
Connection: Keep-Alive
Pragma: xClientGuid=
{3300AD50-2C39-46C0-AE0A-889398BAE808}
Pragma: packet-pair-experiment=1
Supported: com.microsoft.wm.srvppair, com.microsoft.wm.sswitch, com.microsoft.wm.startupprofile, com.microsoft.wm.predstrm
Pragma: no-cache,stream-time=0,stream-offset=0:0,packet-num=4294967295,max-duration=0
Pragma: LinkBW=2147483647, rate=1.000, AccelDuration=10000, AccelBW=2147483647
HTTP/1.1 405 Method Not Allowed
Date: Tue, Oct 06 2015 13:35:55 GMT
I am using live555 testH264VideoStreamer to stream the video.
If I try to use libVLC then it works. Why is it not working with QVideoWidget (which in turn uses Windows Media Foundation)?

Answer 1

It seems that Windows Media Foundation does not support many 3rd party RSTP streams which have slightly different headers and capabilities.
"The MF RTSP source has not been widely tested with third party RTSP servers." https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsdesktop/en-US/4ac87f5f-b8c5-471a-a424-55c0fff04eac/using-the-media-foundation-sdk-to-parse-rtsp-streams?forum=mediafoundationdevelopment
In the context of RTSP, "Media Foundation supports the following formats: WMA, WMV, audio/L16 (LPCM), and audio/MPA (MP3). The server's response should indicate which format it is asking for." https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsdesktop/en-US/e1a970aa-8bf5-46bb-a301-de271a6ae4bc/rtsp-without-proprietary-supported-header?forum=mediafoundationdevelopment
Apparently, a custom WMF media source would need to be implemented and it may have differences depending on the quirks of the RTSP device.