Documentation
Media: RTSP/RTP streaming in the browser
Media is the VIGIL-MESH streaming console: it plays RTSP/RTP streams encoded in H264 or H265 directly in the browser, relying on WebCodecs for hardware decoding. No plugin, no extension, no transcoding gateway: the page receives the stream and displays it. This console serves just as well for checking a camera as for composing a video-surveillance wall in a studio application. This page describes what Media plays, why the absence of a plugin changes the game, and the video-surveillance use case.
Playing RTSP/RTP in the browser
Media receives RTSP/RTP streams and decodes them in the page to display them. The supported video codecs are H264 and H265, which cover the overwhelming majority of the network camera installed base. Decoding relies on WebCodecs, the browser API that gives access to the machine's hardware decoder: the decompression load is carried by the GPU or the dedicated decoder, not by a slow software reimplementation.
| Element | Support |
|---|---|
| Transport | RTSP / RTP |
| Video codecs | H264, H265 |
| Decoding | WebCodecs (the browser's hardware decoder) |
| Environment | Browser, with no plugin or extension |
The benefit of WebCodecs is twofold: hardware decoding preserves the machine's resources even with several streams, and it stays as close as possible to the original image since there is no re-encoding. The displayed stream is the one produced by the camera, decoded as is.
Without a plugin
Playing camera streams in a browser long relied on plugins or transcoding gateways: a native component to install, an extension to maintain, or an intermediate server converting the RTSP into a format the page can read. Each of these approaches adds a piece to administer, a dependency to update and often a point of latency.
Media removes that intermediary: the page receives and decodes the stream itself. There is nothing to install on the workstation, nothing to authorize beyond the page, and no transcoding server to maintain in the chain. This simplifies deployment and reduces the number of elements that could fail between the camera and the screen.
- No native component to install on the viewing workstation.
- No browser extension to deploy or maintain.
- No mandatory transcoding gateway between the camera and the page.
- A deployment that comes down to opening a page in a recent browser.
Video-surveillance use case
Media's central use case is video surveillance: viewing a fleet of network cameras, checking a view, or composing a video wall. Since the console reads the cameras' RTSP/RTP directly, it fits naturally into a supervision application assembled with the studio, alongside ONVIF controls and operational indicators.
Check a camera
Open an RTSP stream in the browser to verify in an instant a camera's field of view, focus and state.
Compose a video wall
Bring several camera streams together in a single view, with hardware decoding making it possible to display several at once.
Integrate into an application
Use Media as the video block of a supervision console built in the studio, alongside controls and dashboards.
Deploying a fleet of cameras on the mesh — discovery, ONVIF, organizing the streams — is detailed on the dedicated page “Video surveillance and cameras” (/en/docs/cas-cameras).