OpenCaster
OpenCaster is a collection of open-source and free software for the Debian GNU/Linux system to play out and multiplex MPEG transport streams. OpenCaster generates most of the non audio/video data present into transport streams and handles playout of pre-encoded audio/video files or can be integrated with third parties audio/video encoders.
Common use cases
- Table generator
- Interactive TV standards DSMCC object carousel broadcast
- Multiplexing of input multicast UDP MPEG transport stream to output multicast UDP transport stream
- Playout of locally stored, offline encoded audio and video for non-live TV and/or radio stations
- VOD system based on mpeg2 transport stream over IP or over DVB-* for walled garden network like hotels with coax
- DVB-SSU update for decoders OTA
- Teletext generator
Design principles
OpenCaster supports Interprocess communication among its different tools using Named pipes and enabling a high level of customization with shell scripts. The pipe paradigm has been criticized for performance, but the performance loss may be accepted for the ability to customize.Table generation is performed with serialization of a natural language description in Python and already features a large number of descriptors from different digital television standards. Adding new descriptors to the library is simple, and only requires knowledge of how the packet is specified bit by bit.