Real Time Streaming protocol (RTSP)

Real Time Streaming Protocol, RTSP, is an application-level protocol. Its goal is to offer robust protocol that can stream multimedia over multicast and unicast in "one to many"-applications. It also supports interoperation between clients and servers from different vendors. It's currently a proposed standard.

RTSP protocol is used for years for streaming Real Video and Streaming Real Audio. And starting with Windows Media Player 9 Series, Windows Media Services 9 Series and Windows Server 2003 RTSP Protocol is now the default protocol for streaming Windows Media.

Differences between RTSP and HTTP

The RTSP is intentionally similar in syntax and operation to HTTP/1.1. However, it differs in a number of important aspects from HTTP:

• RTSP introduces a number of new methods and has a different protocol identifier.
• An RTSP server needs to maintain state by default in almost all cases, as opposed to the stateless nature of HTTP.
• Both an RTSP server and client can issue requests.
• Data is carried out-of-band by a different protocol. (There is an exception to this.)
• RTSP is defined to use ISO 10646 (UTF-8) rather than ISO 8859-1, consistent with current HTML internationalization efforts.
• The Request-URI always contains the absolute URI.

This makes "virtual hosting" easier, where a single host with one IP address hosts several document trees.

RTSP URL is in form rtsp://media.example.com:554/twister/audiotrack, where

• rtsp:// is the identifier for TCP rtsp scheme (rtspu:// is used for UDP scheme)
• 554 is the assumed port for Real-Time Streaming Protocol
• twister is the name of the presentation
• audiotrack is the name of certain stream in the presentation (this is optional)

The following ports have been registered with IANA:
rtsp 554/tcp Real Time Stream Control Protocol
rtsp 554/udp Real Time Stream Control Protocol
rtsp-alt 8554/tcp RTSP Alternate (see port 554)
rtsp-alt 8554/udp RTSP Alternate (see port 554)

RTSP Stream Player - RealPlayer

Only RTSP can deliver SureStream files with multiple bit-rate encoding. SMIL, RealText, and RealPix also require RTSP. RTSP uses TCP for player control messages, and UDP for video and audio data. RTSP can also use TCP to deliver data, but this is not recommended. Use RTSP with RTSP-compatible players such as RealOne Player, RealPlayer, and QuickTime Player.

RTSP Audio Recorder - Mini-stream Ripper

• Record live online radio streams like Windows Media, Real Audio, Winamp Shoutcast.
• Save streams as RM, MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG or FLAC audio files.
• Split songs by the duration automatically
• Free drag and drop features
  
• More Features...

RTSP Ripper/Downloader/Capturer - RM Downloader

• Records both video and audio streams (Real Audio, Real Video, Real Media,: RA, RAM, RM and RMVB)
• Download live online radio streams like Winamp SHOUTcast, Icecast, and BBC Radio stations
• Split songs by file's size automatically
• More features...

Windows Media RTSP Recorder - WM Downloader

A simple example: rtsp://69.3.31.228/c16_14-15.wma

Windows Media Services 9 Series can use RTSP, HTTP, or MMS for streaming. It uses RTSP when trying to connect to Windows Media Player 9 Series. Earlier versions of Windows Media Player do not support RTSP, but they do support MMS.

• Records both video and audio streams (Windows Audio, Windows Video, Windows Media:  .ASF, . WMA, .WMV and .ASX)
• Captures SHOUTcast streams (pls, http, m3u)
• A schedule, which allow you to record online streaming music at any time
• More Features...

How to download/save/capture/record/rip RTSP streams

Mini-stream Ripper only captures audio streams. Rm Downloader Records both video and audio streams. Here we give an example of RM Downloader.

1. Open RM Downloader(RD)
2. Click on the Load button on RD's screen to open the URL Loading screen. In the "Load" box that opens, type in: "rtsp://aural1.justconcerts.com/justconcerts/sessions/k-os/020730/bling_bling.rm". Then click 'ok', RD will load the stream for you.

1. If you want to record the stream which RealPlayer is playing, single click the "File" drop-down menu on the RealPlayer interface. Choose "View file info" under "Clip Properties", Copy "rtsp://aural1.justconcerts.com/justconcerts/sessions/k-os/020730/bling_bling.rm" in the Clip Info Box. Paste the address "rtsp://aural1.justconcerts.com/justconcerts/sessions/k-os/020730/bling_bling.rm" in the RD's loading url box. Then click 'ok', RD will load the stream for you.

1. If the stream has been sucessfully loaded, you'll get the message "Please press 'Start' to download the ready files". If not, you'll get an error message.

1. Click on the Start button on the right of RD's screen to start recording.