Rtwatch: Watch videos with friends using WebRTC

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Summary

Rtwatch is an open-source Go-based utility that uses Pion WebRTC and GStreamer to enable synchronized, real-time video playback for multiple viewers, with backend-managed state to ensure uniform pause/seek controls.

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pion/rtwatch

Source: https://github.com/pion/rtwatch

Watch videos with friends using WebRTC, let your backend do the pausing and seeking.

Pion webrtc Slack Widget
Go Report Card License: MIT


Using Pion WebRTC and GStreamer you can now watch videos in real-time with your friends. Watch your favorite movie perfectly synchronized with multiple viewers. If someone pauses it pauses for everyone, and no one can and no one fast forward only their video.

rtwatch is different then any other solution because all state is stored on the backend. Only the current audio/video frame is being sent to the viewers, there is no way they can download/cache the videos either for future usage.

Instructions

Docker

This requires host networking to be enabled. By default it is off on macOS at this time. By default this will work on Linux out of the box.

git clone https://github.com/pion/rtwatch.git
cd rtwatch
docker build . -t rtcwatch
docker run --net=host -it rtcwatch

Install GStreamer

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly

Windows MinGW64/MSYS2

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gstreamer mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-libav mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-plugins-good mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-plugins-bad mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-plugins-ugly

Error Handling

pkg-config –cflags – gstreamer-1.0 gstreamer-app-1.0 pkg-config: exec: “pkg-config”: executable file not found in %PATH%

After gstreamer installation,SET the PATH variable to C:/{path to gstreamer}/bin

Sorry, unimplemented: 64 bit mode not compiled in

RUN $ g++ -v

CHECK Target- x86_64-w64-mingw32(Required).

if not Download using this

macOS

brew install gst-plugins-good pkg-config gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-ugly
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/libffi/lib/pkgconfig"

Download and build rtwatch

git clone https://github.com/pion/rtwatch.git
cd rtwatch
go build .

Play your video

./rtwatch -container-path=/home/sean/video.mp4
> Video file '/home/sean/video.mp4' is now available on ':8080', have fun!

rtwatch uses uridecodebin so you can launch it with a URI.

./rtwatch -container-path='https://ia800207.us.archive.org/15/items/BigBuckBunny_124/Content/big_buck_bunny_720p_surround.mp4'

Watch your video with friends!

Open http://localhost:8080 and hit play. Open it in multiple tabs so you can see how it syncs between multiple viewers.

You also have the option to Seek/Play/Pause! Press those buttons and watch the video state change for every viewer at the same time.

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