Low latency viewer is a simple player for H.264 streams from an IP camera. It doesn't make use of graphics (GPU) acceleration but it achieves a good latency. Depending on the camera 120 - 150ms end-to-end latency for a 1080p stream is possible. With faster hardware the best results are ~70 ms end-to-end.
It's a test tool, not suited for movies (no audio). There is a binary version for Windows and Linux. These are statically linked and free of dependencies, so zero-install. For Linux this may not be 100% true, depending on your setup some installation of extra components may be required
Features
- H.264 (base/main/high profile)
- HTTP-JPEG
- RTSP with unicast and multicast UDP-RTP, TCP-over-RTSP transports
- Basic and Digest Authentication
- Commandline interface and GUI
- Joystick PTZ-control for Axis cameras (0.0.3)
- Single self-contained executable, no install
- Client-side metadata overlay of some camera analytics
- Some error condition overlays explained on the documentation page
What makes it low latency?
- It shares the load (receive & reconstruct, decode, scale, render) over multiple threads
- When it runs late:
- Skips remaining P-frames in the queue when an I-frame arrives
- Drops scale/render but continues to decode to keep consistent decoder state
- Explicitly requests I-frames in case of decode error, thus allowing very long GOPs, which improves networkload and with that jitter/latency
- By default it does not attempt to correct jitter
What makes it a test tool?
- Lack of playback features :)
- It highlights errors. Jitter will be visible, overlays are shown for packetloss, frame drop or running late.
Compared to VLC
VLC is complete media application which can play-, record-, convert- and stream almost every media format. Llv just plays a h.264 videostream in a simple way. It does add some IP camera-, mostly Axis-, specific tricks. The main differentiator is low latency, which is something VLC is not. But VLC is a must-have companion program. Where Llv is not enough and you need to use VLC, here is a page with tips.