Running multiple instances of quicktime for live video

[sarajoseph]

Hi, could anybody help me understand this?



I am trying to figure out a way that I can view live feeds of multiple iOS cameras on my iMac. The best idea/method I have so far is to run multiple instances of the quicktime app, and in each I select New Movie Recording, which allows me to view a live feed of an iOS device connected via lighting cable. It works awesome but Quicktime only allows me to have one live feed open at a time. To get around that, I found out how to open multiple instances of Quicktime simultaneously ( entering open n /Applications/QuickTime\Player.app in terminal) and I can view multiple live feeds at once. Great! Only problem is for some reason, after I have 2-3 live feeds running, when I try to open anymore, it doesn’t workon my wordpress site - it just pops up “The operation could not be completed”. I don’t understand while it would allow 3 but not 4, or sometimes it allows two but not 3. Does anybody know why this would be happening? It doesn’t seem to be a computing power problem as the computer is running just fine up to speed throughout. Does anybody know a solution to this problem? Or a different way to achieve this goal? Thanks! Dan

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

-Which version of OS X?
-What kind of cameras?
-You are uploading the feeds to your WordPress site?

Normally, you would have an application running on the Mac that would take the input of multiple cameras and stream them to a WordPress video plug-in like VideoWhisper Live, Stream Video Player, etc. Mac apps for multiple video cameras are SecuritySpy and EvoCam 4 (though Evological seems to be out of business). QuickTime Player wasn't designed to run multiple instances of the application, or to be used as a video broadcasting/streaming app. The now defunct Apple QuickTime Broadcaster and QuickTime Streaming Server were excellent for what you are trying to accomplish, but were abandoned back in 2009, and QuickTime Streaming Server needed an OS X Snow Leopard Server installation. Apple does have HTTP Live Streaming, but you will need a free Apple Developer account to get the HTTP Live Streaming Tools (which are command-line tools) and support documentation.

The inconsistency in the number of streams is probably your ISP's upload speed.

C