I would like to know the container format of the following stream: rtsp://8.15.251.47:1935/rtplive/FairfaxVideo3595
According to ffprobe, the container format is RTSP (format_long_name = RTSP input).
I also looked through the debug messages in VLC but I did not find any information on the stream's container format. What I DID find was that the codec was H264 and that VLC was using live555 to decode the stream. The media files live555 can support according to their website (http://www.live555.com/mediaServer/) makes me think that the above stream is an H264 elementary stream and is not in a container format. Am I correct?
Also, if the stream indeed does not have a container format, is it ok to say the container format is RTP (not RTSP as ffprobe says) because that's the protocol used to send the media data?
Thanks!
RTSP is more of a handshake done with the server, while RTP is the actual stream coming in once the handshake is done and you start streaming. RTSP URLs usually start with RTSP://... and the sequence of requests goes roughly something like
RTSP DESCRIBE, RTSP SETUP, RTSP PLAY, TEARDOWN The response from the server to DESCRIBE will contain the information you need to know about the encoding of the file (H264, JPEG, etc.) while PLAY will cause the server to start sending the RTP stream. I suggest looking up RTSP SDP (session description protocol) for how to extract this information.
In case of streams, you are most likely correct, since the protocol used for streaming is usually RTP, and it tends to go hand in hand with RTSP (however I'm unsure whether or not we can apply the term container in the context of streaming)