From: Steinar H. Gunderson <sgunderson@bigfoot.com>
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2023 14:26:19 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: Update README about Metacube input.
X-Git-Tag: 1.5.0~4
X-Git-Url: https://git.sesse.net/?p=cubemap;a=commitdiff_plain;h=b8cc60e5bec90ab08ac96e8017c0de22c0fb5e41

Update README about Metacube input.
---

diff --git a/README b/README
index dc6d4d3..efcfa77 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,5 +1,4 @@
-Cubemap is a high-performance, high-availability video reflector,
-specifically made for use with VLC.
+Cubemap is a high-performance, high-availability video reflector.
 
 A short list of features:
 
@@ -30,8 +29,17 @@ HOWTO:
   ./configure
   make -j4
 
-If you want to use HTTP input (you probably want to), you want VLC 2.2.0
-or newer. Then start the VLC encoder with the “metacube” flag to the http
+Cubemap does not in itself understand the format of video streams;
+it requires HTTP input that is already delineated into headers and blocks,
+so that it knows what parts of the stream to skip to clients that
+connect after the stream has been. (The exception is self-synchronizing
+streams with no headers, such as MPEG-TS. These can also be sent or
+received over UDP) The input format is specific to Cubemap and is called
+Metacube (technically, Metacube2, but Metacube1 is long gone and nothing
+uses it anymore). Currently, you have three options to create Metacube
+video streams: VLC, Nageru or FFmpeg with a hack.
+
+For VLC, start the VLC encoder with the “metacube” flag to the http
 access mux, like this:
 
   cvlc [...] --sout '#std{access=http{metacube,mime=video/x-flv},mux=flv,dst=:4013/test.flv}'
@@ -39,8 +47,9 @@ access mux, like this:
 Then look through cubemap.config.sample, copy it to cubemap.config,
 compile and start cubemap.
 
-Nageru, my free video mixer, can also produce Metacube streams natively.
-See the manual at https://nageru.sesse.net/doc/ for more information.
+Nageru, my free video mixer, can also produce Metacube streams natively,
+and so can its included transcoder/remuxer Kaeru. See the manual
+at https://nageru.sesse.net/doc/ for more information.
 
 If you feel very adventurous, you can use LD_PRELOAD to load
 ffmpeg_metacube_hack.so into an FFmpeg-using binary. (This is