OK, here's the deal...

Seven years ago I put up this great video feed of a nice view of the mainlines through Centralia, three RRs, no waiting (or very little waiting). The 720p video stream required Apple QuickTime (and JavaScript) to use in a browser. Sadly, technology marched on, and Apple assassinated their legacy, completely withdrawing the QuickTime plug-in as an embedded video solution. The major software companies are now pushing HTML5 as the video standard, which magically doesn't support older video protocols used outside of "big media". Funny how that works.

Anyway, the underlying problem is the Centralia Railcam is a professional CCTV model that broadcasts an older, long-established video streaming method, RTSP. HTML5 does not support RTSP, and if Apple, Adobe, Google/YouTube and Facebook continue to have their way, HTML5 will never support RTSP since they can't sit in the middle and snoop on your streaming activity. (Did I actually say that? It's true, however.) Since the camera works fine for my purposes, there's no incentive to spend the money to upgrade to something with HTML5 support. In other words, it is what it is.

However, the stream is still available! Just not embedded in a web page. I could force VLC or another embedded viewer plug-in on everybody, but for what it takes to do that, just use the core app and get it over with. I don't like it when sites force a "special" embedded plug in to view "their" video - it is especially untrustworthy and an avenue for malware.

For folks who know the tricks to view the camera through VLC, FFMPEG, and other direct-stream apps, use this URL:

rtsp://railcam.railfancentralia.com/axis-media/media.amp

or whatever variation of it your viewer app needs.

The resolution is now 1080p, which looks great but is a bandwidth hog (shuffling his feet, admitting that HTML5 modes are more efficient). You will need 5mbps of clear, low-latency bandwidth, which is easier these days than it was just a couple of years ago. Also, the outbound feed at this site is 10mbps and it's doing more than just the video, so if I'm viewing the camera from home and you jump on, it's likely both of us will grind to a halt. If this happens, close the viewer and try again later.

One request: be kind. Don't start your viewer and just leave it running. Limit your visit to when you're actually sitting there watching. If I discover that somebody is tying up the feed hours at a time I will enable a timer, or even password-protect the feed and restrict viewing to trusted friends.

Thanks for listening, and my apologies if you can't view the live camera any more. Technology-based media and their devil-spawn marketing engines march on whether we want it or not.