DuckSoup

Videoconferencing tool for social experiments.

From a technical standpoint, DuckSoup is:

a videoconference server acting as a relay for peers (more precisely, a SFU made with Go and pion)
with the possibility to record and optionnally transform video and audio streams thanks to GStreamer

The companion repository deploy-ducksoup documents a possible DuckSoup deployment workflow relying on Docker Compose.

DuckSoup server overview

A DuckSoup server exposes the following:

an HTTP static server for ducksoup.js and example front-ends (TCP)
an HTTP websocket endpoint for signaling (TCP)
WebRTC (UDP)

Using the client library ducksoup.js is the preferred way to interact with DuckSoup server (regarding signaling and WebRTC).

DuckSoup player

Let's assume we have a DuckSoup server installed and running at ducksoup-host.com and we want to embed a DuckSoup player in a webpage served from my-experiment-host.com.

The embedding origin (my-experiment-host.com) has to be listed as an authorized origin when starting the DuckSoup instance available at ducksoup-host.com (see Environment variables).

Then, on the experiment web page, include the ducksoup.js library (check latest version number in config/version.yml):

<script src="https://ducksoup-host.com/assets/v1.5/js/ducksoup.js"></script>

And render it (in JavaScript):

const dsPlayer = await DuckSoup.render(embedOptions, peerOptions);

Where:

assigning to a variable (dsPlayer above) is only needed if you want to further control the DuckSoup audio/video player instance (see Player API)
embedOptions (object) must define mountEl or callback (or both):
- mountEl (DOM node, obtained for instance with document.getElementById("ducksoup-mount")): set this property if you want the player to automatically append <audio> and <video> HTML elements to mountEl for each incoming audio or video stream. If you want to manage how to append and render tracks in the DOM, don't define mountEl and prefer callback
- callback (JavaScript function) to receive events from DuckSoup in the form ({ kind, payload }) => { /* callback body */ }. The different kinds of events the player may trigger are:
  - "joined" when websocket has connected to the interaction identified by interactionName in peerOptions (see below). The associated payload may be: "new_interaction" if the user is the first to connect, "existing-interaction" if s/he's not, "reconnection" if s/he's reconnecting to the same interaction (a page refresh for instance)
  - "other_joined" with a { userId: "string", streamId: "string" } payload that describes the stream ID of all tracks belonging to a given user
  - "other_left" with a { userId: "string" } payload
  - "track" (payload: RTCTrackEvent) when a new track sent by the server is available. This event is used to render the track to the DOM, It won't be triggered if you defined mountEl
  - "start" (remaining seconds as payload) when videoconferencing starts
  - "ending" (no payload) when videoconferencing is soon ending
  - "files" with a list of recording files for this peer. This event occurs just before "end"
  - "end" (no payload) when videoconferencing ends
  - "closed" (no payload) when websocket is closed
  - "error-join" (no payload) when peerOptions (see below) are incorrect
  - "error-duplicate" (no payload) when a user with same userId (see peerOptions below) is already connected
  - "error-full" (no payload) when the videoconference interaction is full
  - "error-aborted" (no payload) when other peers have not joined the room after too long (timeout)
  - "error with more information in payload
  - "stats" (payload contains bandwidth usage information) periodically triggered (fired only when stats is set to true)
- stats (boolean, defaults to false) to enable "stats" messages sent to client callback (please note that stats are polled every second)
peerOptions (object) must contain the following properties:
- signalingUrl (string) the URL of DuckSoup signaling websocket (for instance wss://ducksoup-host.com/ws for a DuckSoup hosted at ducksoup-host.com)
- interactionName (string) the interaction identifier
- userId (string) a unique user identifier
peerOptions may contain the following optional properties:
- duration (integer, defaults to 30) the duration of the experiment in seconds
- audioOnly (boolean, defaults to false) set to true if only audio tracks are used (in this case the following properties are irrelevant width, height, framerate, videoFx, video, videoFormat, gpu)
- size (integer, defaults to 2) the number of participants (size == 1 for a mirror effect)
- width (integer, defaults to 800) of the video stream
- height (integer, defaults to 600) of the video stream
- framerate (integer, defaults to 25) of the video stream
- audioFx (string, see format in Gstreamer effects) if an audio effect has to be applied
- videoFx (string, see format in Gstreamer effects) if video effect has to be applied
- audio (object) merged with DuckSoup default constraints and passed to getUserMedia (see properties)
- video (object) merged with DuckSoup default constraints and passed to getUserMedia (see properties)
- videoFormat (string) possible values: "H264" (default if none) or "VP8"
- recordingMode (string) possible values (some of them are mainly for testing purposes):
  - forced (default if none) records audio/video in the same muxed file and forces framerate of reencoded video streams
  - free same as forced but without enforcing framerate
  - reenc same as forced but reencodes the dry signal too
  - split records separate files for audio and video
  - none provides FX but no recording
  - rtpbin_only no FX nor recording, but RTP packets go through GStreamer rtpbin for its jitterbuffer
  - direct (gst src->sink) no FX nor recording, RTP packets enter and exit GStreamer directly
  - bypass no FX nor recording, copy RTP input to RTP outputs within pion (bypassing GStreamer)
- namespace (string, defaults to "default") to group recordings under the same namespace (folder)
- gpu (boolean, defaults to false) enable hardware accelarated h264 encoding and decoding (and other cuda accelerated plugins like raw video conversions), if relevant hardware is available on host and if DuckSoup is launched with the DUCKSOUP_NVCODEC=true environment variable (see Environment variables)
- logLevel (int, defaults to 1):
  - 0: no client logs sent to server
  - 1: logs related to RTP stats (bitrates, fps, keyframes...) are sent to server
  - 2: above + logs related to signaling are sent to server
  - please note that logs relying on WebRTC stats data are only polled every second, meaning some data samples may be missing
- overlay (boolean, defaults to false) add text overlay on top of the video (mainly for debugging purposes)

For a usage example, you may have a look at front/src/js/test/mirror/mirror.js

GStreamer effects

DuckSoup server comes with GStreamer and the ability to apply effects on live video and audio streams. Check some examples from GStreamer documentation to get a glimpse of how to set GStreamer elements and their properties.

From the standpoint of DuckSoup, it is possible to add one audio and one video effect as a GStreamer element, following this syntax:

generic format: "element property1=value1 property2=value2 ..." with 0, 1 or more properties
audio processing example: "pitch pitch=0.8"
video processing example: "coloreffects preset=xpro"

You may browse available plugins (each plugin contains one or more elements) to discover elements and their properties.

Please note that, even if the default DuckSoup configuration comes with the "good, bad and ugly" GStreamer plugin packages, some elements in those packages might not be available when running DuckSoup (especially due to hardware limitations).

It is also possible to add custom GStreamer plugins to DuckSoup (check the section Custom GStreamer plugins)

Controlling effects

If you want to control the properties of a GStreamer effect you need:

to name the effect described in audioFx or videoFx by adding a unique name property, for instance "element property1=1.0 name=fx"
call the player controlFx method, for instance ds.controlFx("fx", "property1", 1.2, 500)

In this example, proprety1 has an initial value of 1.0 and is updated to 1.2, with a linear interpolation over 500 ms. If the last parameter is ommitted (transition duration), the update is instantaneous.

For the time being only float values are allowed when controlling properties.

Player API

Instantiation is an async operation : const dsPlayer = await DuckSoup.render(mountEl, peerOptions, embedOptions);

The following methods are available on a DuckSoup player:

controlFx(effectName, property, value, transitionDuration, userId) (and polyControlFx) to update the property of the effect named in peerOptions#audioFx. For instance with an audioFx of "element property1=1.0 name=fx":
- effectName (string) is fx
- property (string) is property1
- value (float) sets a new value, for instance 1.1
- transitionDuration (integer counting ms, defaults to 0, expect better results for 200 and above) is the optional duration of the interpolation between the old and new values
- userId (optional, if not set defaults to self peer/user) is used to control a property on an effect applied to another user in the same interaction
start() to start signaling and then WebRTC communication
stop() to stop media streams and close communication with server. Note that players are running for a limited duration (set by peerOptions#duration which is capped server-side) and most of the time you don't need to use this method
serverLog(kind, payload) to generate a server-side log (kind and payload will be stringified, payload is optional)

Front-ends

If DuckSoup is running and accessible for instance at http://localhost:8100, there are a few available test front-ends:

http://localhost:8100/test/play/ one user reflection with live UX for effects
http://localhost:8100/test/mirror/ one user reflection with peerOptions control and debug information
http://localhost:8100/test/interaction/ choose a user name, interaction name and size and open in multiple tabs (same number as interaction size)

A stats page displaying raw information about current interactions and bandwidth stats is accessible at (currently under work):

http://localhost:8100/stats/

DuckSoup server

Build

If you are using one of the provided Docker images, you don't need to install binary dependencies (Go, GStreamer, yarn).

To build DuckSoup:

go build

If you're not using Docker, you have to install those dependencies first:

Regarding GStreamer on Debian you may:

apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-0 gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-doc gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-x gstreamer1.0-alsa gstreamer1.0-gl gstreamer1.0-gtk3 gstreamer1.0-qt5 gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio
apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev

Depending on the GStreamer plugins used, additional dependencies may be needed (opencv, dlib...).

Front-end dependencies

If you launch DuckSoup server with one of these options (see more in next paragraph):

DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV ./ducksoup
DUCKSOUP_MODE=FRONT_BUILD ./ducksoup

Then DuckSoup will rebuild/bundle/minify JS assets (thanks to esbuild) needed by the different Front-ends. The effect is to process js files from front/src to front/static.

Since the /test/play/ front-end requires additional JS modules (React for instance), it is required that you fetch them before launching DuckSoup. Fetch front-end dependencies with:

yarn

In particular, if DuckSoup instantaneously crashes with a JS build fatal error: Could not resolve "..." error message, it means front-end dependencies need to be installed with yarn.

Settings

When changing settings (either as environment variables or defined in config/*.yml files) one needs to restart the DuckSoup server so that changes are taken into account.

Security related settings and settings defining how DuckSoup is run on host are controlled by environment variables:

DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV enables automatic front-end assets build + adds a few allowed origins for WebSocket connections + changes log format (adds the file:line of caller) + print logs to Stdout
DUCKSOUP_PORT=8000 (defaults to 8100) to set port listen by server
DUCKSOUP_WEB_PREFIX=/path (defaults to none) if DuckSoup server is behind a proxy and reachable at https://ducksoup-host.com/path
DUCKSOUP_ALLOWED_WS_ORIGINS=https://origin1,https://origin2:8180 (defaults to none) declares comma separated allowed origins for WebSocket connections
DUCKSOUP_EXPLICIT_HOST_CANDIDATE (defaults to false) if true, will use DUCKSOUP_PUBLIC_IP as a host candidate during signaling (not necessary if ICE servers are used). It only applies to DuckSoup server candidate, and won't affect STUN servers being used or not, as defined by DUCKSOUP_STUN_SERVER_URLS (see below)
DUCKSOUP_PUBLIC_IP (defaults to none) needed if DUCKSOUP_EXPLICIT_HOST_CANDIDATE is true or if DuckSoup embedded TURN server is enabled (see DUCKSOUP_TURN_* variables)
DUCKSOUP_TURN_ADDRESS and DUCKSOUP_TURN_PORT (defaults to none) if both are set, they will be used to configure DuckSoup embedded TURN server and share its configuration with ducksoup.js as turn:${DUCKSOUP_TURN_ADDRESS}:${DUCKSOUP_TURN_PORT}
DUCKSOUP_TEST_LOGIN (defaults to "ducksoup") to protect test and stats pages with HTTP authentitcation
DUCKSOUP_TEST_PASSWORD (defaults to "ducksoup") to protect test and stats pages with HTTP authentitcation
DUCKSOUP_MODE=FRONT_BUILD builds front-end assets but do not start server
DUCKSOUP_NVCODEC (defaults to false) set to true to use NVIDIA hardware for H264 encoding (see nvcodec rather than relying on the CPU (only if NVIDIA GPU available on host)
DUCKSOUP_NVCUDA (defaults to false) set to true to use NVIDIA hardware for video conversion (see nvcodec rather than relying on the CPU (only if NVIDIA GPU available on host)
DUCKSOUP_JITTER_BUFFER=200 (defaults to 150, in milliseconds) latency value for the RTP jitter buffer of incoming tracks
DUCKSOUP_GENERATE_PLOTS=true (defaults to false) generates debug plots in the interaction data folder
DUCKSOUP_GENERATE_TWCC=true (defaults to false) enables RTCP TWCC reports generated by DuckSoup and sent to browser
DUCKSOUP_GCC=true (defaults to false, meaning bandwith estimation is done relying on RTCP Receiver Reports) enables GCC bandwidth estimation
DUCKSOUP_GST_TRACKING=true (defaults to false) enabled GStreamer log processing (you are most likely not interested in that option)
DUCKSOUP_LOG_FILE=log/ducksoup.log (defaults to none) to declare a file to write global logs to (fails silently if file can't be opened)
DUCKSOUP_LOG_STDOUT=true (defaults to false, except when DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV) to print all logs to Stdout:
- if DUCKSOUP_LOG_FILE is also set, global logs are written to both (see next section)
- if neither are set, logs are written to Stderr
DUCKSOUP_LOG_LEVEL (defaults to 3) to select log level display (see next section)
DUCKSOUP_INTERCEPT_GST_LOGS (defaults to false) disable GStreamer default logger to intercept logs and put them in the relevant interaction logs if possible
DUCKSOUP_FORCE_OVERLAY (defaults to false) set to true to display a time overlay in videos (recorded)
DUCKSOUP_NO_RECORDING (defaults to false) set to true to disable audio/video file recordings
DUCKSOUP_STUN_SERVER_URLS=false (defaults to stun:stun.l.google.com:19302) declares comma separated allowed STUN servers to be used to find ICE candidates (or false to disable STUN) both for peers and the DuckSoup server

Since DuckSoup relies on GStreamer, GStreamer environment variables may be useful, for instance:

GST_PLUGIN_PATH (unset by default) to declare additional GStreamer plugin paths (prefer appending to the existing GST_PLUGIN_PATH: GST_PLUGIN_PATH="$GST_PLUGIN_PATH:/additional/plugins/path")
GST_DEBUG (unset by default) to control GStreamer debug output

And regarding pion:

PION_LOG_TRACE (unset by default) to log pion debug messages (see more)

DuckSoup settings related to GStreamer pipelines are defined in config/gst.yml:

rtpjitterbuffer defines properties passed to the rtpjitterbuffer plugin
vp8, x264, nv264 and opus define codec settings, nv264 being preferred to x264 depending on DUCKSOUP_NVCODEC (and gpu on peerOptions).

DuckSoup server settings are defined in config/server.yml:

generateStats set to true to generate and expose server stats (see Front-ends)

DuckSoup SFU settings are defined in config/sfu.yml:

audio defines min/max/default values of target bitrates for output (reencoded) audio tracks
video defines min/max/default values of target bitrates for output (reencoded) video tracks

DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV and .env file

If you have a .env file at the root of the project (you may copy/paste/edit the provided env.example) and if DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV, then all the variables defined in .env will be accessible to DuckSoup.

Indeed, you may prefer editing this .env file (over defining all the environment variables in the command line) and then run:

go build && DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV GST_DEBUG=2,videodecoder:1 ./ducksoup

A few important remarks:

this feature is only enabled when DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV (meaning DUCKSOUP_MODE is defined before/independently from .env)
it only works for DuckSoup (not for GStreamer, that's why GST_DEBUG is still set in the example above)
.env is loaded by helpers/init.go, that's why the helpers package is imported by other packages that use environment variable
.env is not bundled in the Docker images documented below and is only meant as a development feature

Nevertheless, using .env files in production may also be interesting. A solution relying on Docker Compose is documented here.

Logs configuration

There are 2 log scopes:

global logs : the gather initialization logs and logs that can't be associated to an interaction (for instance when a peer server has just been created and is not already attached to an interaction)
interaction logs (all events that can relate to a running interaction) they are appended to data/[namespace]/[interaction_name]/[interaction_name].log

Some settings apply to both scopes:

they are pretty-printed to stdout if DUCKSOUP_LOG_STDOUT=true or DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV
depending on DUCKSOUP_LOG_LEVEL, here are the generated logs (the default value is 2):
- 0 fatal and panic logs
- 1 errors (and GStreamer warnings)
- 2 server info and above
- 3 server debug, in/out/encoding bitrates, client info and above
- 4 trace logs (incoming and outgoing RTCP packets, including TWCC reports) and above
- please note that while we rely on zerolog, we don't use the same semantics regarding levels, their index or meaning.

This setting only apply to global logs:

DUCKSOUP_LOG_FILE=log/ducksoup.log to append global logs to a given file (interaction logs will always be appended to their own log file)

Finally, please note that GStreamer or pion may generate their own logs and can be controlled with their own environment variables (GST_DEBUG or PION_LOG_TRACE for instance).

Logs format

This section details how logs can be parsed, each entry being stored as a JSON object.

First of all, each log has the following properties:

level: useful to separate errors (level: "error") from other types ("info", "debug", "trace")
time: the log timestamp ("20060102-150405.000")
context: used to categorize logs (see more below)
message: a unique string that describes the event that generated the log ("interaction_end" for instance, see Log message reference)

Here are some optional but frequent properties:

value: depending on the log, a value may convey additional data
unit: sometimes needed to illustrate value's meaning
error: Go error's string explaining level: "error" logs
source: "client": present only if log has been generated as is by the client (ducksoup.js). Please note that when a log has a message property that starts with client_, it means the log is related to the client/remote peer. But this log may be generated either client or server-side. In that case, the source property helps distinguish between the two.

Now let's list all the possible contexts:

"peer": related to overall peer communication (websocket, peer connection)
"interaction": related to interaction (creation, end, adding tracks...)
"track": related to peer media tracks
"pipeline": related to processing pipelines attached to tracks
"signaling": related to peer webrtc signaling
"gstreamer": GStreamer logs
"init": logs occuring when app initializes
"app": app-level logs
"server": HTTP server logs
"js_build": for esbuild messages (happen only when building Front-end dependencies)
"ext": logs generated by external/client app that uses DuckSoup

Wherever it makes sense, the following properties are added to the logs:

"namespace": a namespace used by DuckSoup client to categorize the experiment
"interaction": interaction id
"user": user id
"sinceCreation": elapsed time since interaction creation in ms
"sinceStart": elapsed time since interaction start in ms

Logs message reference

Here is a reference of all log messages, grouped by context:

peer context:

message: "websocket_upgraded": websocket upgrade granted for the given origin property
message: "peer_server_started": peer server (websocket and RTC peer connection) started (after a websocket join event)
message: "peer_server_ended": peer server ended (additional cause property)
message: "interaction_ending_sent": interaction "ending" websocket message sent to peer

interaction context:

message: "interaction_created": interaction created by given user (additional origin property)
message: "peer_joined": user joined interaction (additional payload property)
message: "in_track_added": incoming peer track added to interaction (when enough tracks have been added, interaction is ready to start)
message: "interaction_started": when all peers and tracks are ready
message: "interaction_ended": interaction ended (interaction time limit has been reached)
message: "interaction_deleted": occurs after interaction has ended and all users have disconnected. Or occur even if interaction was not started (not enough users)

track context:

message: "in_track_received": remote/incoming audio track added to server peer connection (additional properties: track's ID, ssrc, mime, type: audio or video)
message: "client_fx_control": JS client has requested an update of a GStreamer fx (identified by name, updated with property and value)
message: "audio_in_bitrate": estimated input bitrate of incoming track as described by value and unit propeties
message: "video_in_bitrate": same for video
message: "audio_target_bitrate_updated": new target bitrate of encoder for outgoing track as described by value and unit propeties
message: "video_target_bitrate_updated": same for video
message: "audio_out_bitrate": estimated output bitrate of outgoing track as described by value and unit propeties
message: "video_out_bitrate": same for video
message: "loss_threshold_exceeded": too many lost packets (property value reflects ReceiverReport loss count)
message: "out_track_stopped": processed track (server-side, with given track ID and kind properties) stopped after pipeline stopped
message: "pli_sent": Picture Loss Indication sent to client (additional cause property)
message: "pli_skipped": Picture Loss Indication skipped (throttling, additional cause property)
message: "audio_in_report": describe audio lost RTP packets (coming from client) among count (total) RTP packets emitted by client (since last report)
message: "video_in_report": same for video
message: "client_video_resolution_updated"
message: "client_video_fps_updated"
message: "client_pli_received_count_updated"
message: "client_fir_received_count_updated"
message: "client_keyframe_encoded_count_updated"
message: "client_keyframe_decoded_count_updated"
message: "client_message": free message sent by JS client

pipeline context:

message: "pipeline_created": pipeline (associated to track) has been created
message: "pipeline_started": pipeline started (additional property recording_prefix giving recorded files prefixes)
message: "pipeline_stopped": pipeline stopped (for instance when interaction ends)
message: "pipeline_deleted": pipeline deleted
message: "gstreamer_pli_requested": Picture Loss Indication emitted by GStreamer pipeline associated to the track

signaling context, mostly used to debug signaling, among:

message: "server_signaling_state_changed": see possible values
message: "{client_or_server}_selected_candidate_pair": logs ice candidate selected pair when signaling is stable (for server) or when selectedcandidatepairchange (client)
message: "server_create_offer_requested": signaling update (additional cause property)
message: "duplicate_track_skipped": track already added to peer connection
message: "own_track_skipped": own track not to be sent back to originating peer (except for mirror interaction)

app context:

message: "app_started"
message: "app_ended" (main function has ended)
message: "app_panicked" (panic recovered in main function), additional information in the message property

server context:

message: "not_found"

Regarding gstreamer context, logs are forwarded from GStreamer to DuckSoup and messages are free text generated by GStreamer.

A few additional messages exist, they should not occur (they imply a DuckSoup bug or a GStreamer error):

message: "pipeline_not_found": GStreamer processing can't be mapped to a Go pipeline
message: "track_write_failed": can't write to RTP output track
message: "gstreamer_pipeline_error": a GStreamer error associated to the given Go pipeline

Finally, ext context: free-form messages generated by outer webapp that uses DuckSoup (through ducksoup.js). Whenever the serverLog method of the DuckSoup player is called, a log is created. For instance :

calling dsPlayer.serverLog("user_event", "inactive"); (in JS client app)...
...will generate a log with the following properties:
- context: "ext"
- source: "client"
- message: "ext_user_event" (ext_ prefix is added to avoid nameclashes with other declared messages)
- payload: "inactive"

Plots

If the environment variable DUCKSOUP_GENERATE_PLOTS is set true then pdf plots will be generated and saved in data/$namespace/$interaction_name/plots.

For the time being, audio and video bitrate plots are available (with type video containing more data regarding resolution, keyframes...). In these plots:

client-side generated data is marked by crosses (or triangles for client-side encoded keyframes)
server-side estimated data is marked by circles
the y-axis unit is in kbit/s unless described differently in the legend

Run DuckSoup server

Note: please read the Front-end dependencies section first. It explains why installing front-end dependencies with yarn is required depending on DUCKSOUP_MODE.

Run (without DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV nor DUCKSOUP_ALLOWED_WS_ORIGINS, signaling can't work since no accepted WebSocket origin is declared):

DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV ./ducksoup
DUCKSOUP_ALLOWED_WS_ORIGINS=https://ducksoup-caller-host.com ./ducksoup

An example to build and run with a few settings:

go build && GST_DEBUG=2,videodecoder:1 DUCKSOUP_NVCODEC=true DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV ./ducksoup

The following shortcut build and run DuckSoup with useful development settings:

make dev

To serve with TLS in a local setup, you may consider mkcert to generate certificates. With mkcert installed:

mkdir certs && cd certs && mkcert -key-file key.pem -cert-file cert.pem localhost

Run with TLS:

DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV ./ducksoup --cert certs/cert.pem --key certs/key.pem
DUCKSOUP_ALLOWED_WS_ORIGINS=https://ducksoup-caller-host.com ./ducksoup --cert certs/cert.pem --key certs/key.pem

Custom GStreamer plugins

First create a folder dedicated to custom plugins, and update GST_PLUGIN_PATH accordingly:

mkdir -p plugins
export GST_PLUGIN_PATH="$GST_PLUGIN_PATH:`pwd`/plugins"

Then add plugins (libxyz.so files) to this folder to enable them in DuckSoup GStreamer pipelines. They have to be built against the same GStreamer version than the one running with DuckSoup (1.18.4 at the time of writing this documentation, check with gst-inspect-1.0 --version).

If a plugin depends on an additinal dynamic library, just add the *.so file to the same plugins folder and update the LD_LIBRARY_PATH:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:`pwd`/plugins"

If a plugin can't be found, you may check:

it's located in $GST_PLUGIN_PATH
it's not been blacklisted (for instance if in a previous version a dynamic dependency is missing) by seeing the output of gst-inspect-1.0 -b
if it has been blacklisted, one solution may be to delete GStreamer cache (possibly under /root/.cache)

Concepts in Go code

On each connection to the websocket endpoint in server.go a new peerServer (see peer_server.go) is created:

it manages further client communication through a TCP websocket (ws_conn.go) and a RTC Peer Connection (peer_conn.go)
then it joins (or creates if necessary) an interaction (interaction.go). Interactions manage the user logic (accept/reject user, deal with reconnections) and the trial sequencing and hold necessary data (for instance the list of recorded files)
each interaction holds one reference to a mixer (mixer.go) that implements the SFU part: the mixer manages tracks attached to peer connections, handles signaling and RTCP feedback

For a given user connected to the interaction (abbreviated i in the code), there is one peerServer (ps), one wsConn (ws) and one peerConn (pc).

Depending on its size, an interaction may hold references to several peerServers.

Each peerConn has several tracks:

remote: 2 (audio and video) client->server tracks
local: 2*(n-1) server->client tracks for an interaction of size n (peers don't receive back their own streams)

When an interaction is done (only if aborted or successfully ended), the following resources are released too:

mixer, mixerSlices, senderControllers
peerServer, peerConn, wsConn

There are several ways a peerServer may end:

the room is done
an error occured on wsConn
the peer connection has been closed

When releasing resources related to a peer, it's possible to test only for the peerServer to be done, since the room being done implies peerServers to be done.

Step by step description of a run

Here is an overview of what is happening from connecting to videoconferencing:

peer P1 connects to the signaling endpoint of DuckSoup, specifying a interaction ID
the interaction is created (or joined) and a peerServer is launched to deal with further communication between the server and P1
in particular peerServer creates a peerConn initiliazed with 2 transceivers for P1 audio and video tracks
a first signaling round (S0) occurs to negotiate these tracks
the interaction (in charge of users/peers) initializes a mixer (~ the SFU, in charge of peer connections, tracks, processing and signaling)
at some point following S0, an incoming/remote track for P1 is received (see OnTrack in peer_conn.go ), then a resulting (processed) mixerSlice is created
the mixerSlice struct contains a GStreamer pipeline and a few methods to control the processing of the pipeline
the mixerSlice is added to the mixer of the interaction containing other peers. Each peer is represented by two mixerSlices (one for audio, one for video), the mixer contains the mixerSlices of all peers
once all mixerSlices expected for all peers are ready (2 tracks * number of peers) , the interaction asks the mixer to update signaling:
1. P1 output tracks are added to the other peers connections (and vice versa)
2. new offers are created and sent to update remote peer connections (in the browser)
a by-product of this signaling step is the initialization of senderControllers needed by mixerSlices to inspect network conditions and estimate optimal bitrates

Websocket messages

Messages from server (Go) to client (JS):

kind offer and candidate for signaling (with payloads)
kind start when all peers and tracks are ready
kind ending when the interaction will soon be destroyed
kind end when time is over (payload contains an index of media files recorded for this experiment)
kind error-full when interaction limit has been reached and user can't enter interaction
kind error-duplicate when same user is already in interaction
kind error-join when peerOptions passed to DuckSoup player are incorrect
kind error-aborted when other peers have not joined the room after too long (timeout)
kind error-peer-connection when server-side peer connection can't be established

Code within a Docker container

One may develop DuckSoup in a container based from docker/Dockerfile.code (for instance using VSCode containers integration).

This Dockerfile prefers specifying a Debian version and installing go from source (rather than using the golang base image) so it's possible to choose the same OS version than in production and control gstreamer (apt) packages versions.

If you want to disable dlib compilation within the vscode Docker container, change the build.args property of .devcontainer/devcontainer.json.

Run tests

Launch with:

make test
# verbose
make testv

It triggers tests in the project subfolders, setting appropriate environment variables for specific test behavior.

Update all go deps

go get -t -u ./...
go mod tidy
# or use Makefile
make deps

Using Docker

It is possible to build DuckSoup server from source within your preferred environment as long as you install the dependencies described in Build from source.

One may prefer relying on Docker to provide images with everything needed to build and run DuckSoup. Two options are suggested:

start from a debian image and install dependencies using apt: docker/from-packages/Dockerfile.code is provided as such an example
use the custom ducksouplab/debian-gstreamer image published on Docker Hub and whose definition is available here

The first option is good enough to work, and one may prefer it to have a simple installation process but with package manager versions of GStreamer and Go.

The second option relies on the ducksouplab/debian-gstreamer base image, managed in a separate repository, with the advantage of coming with a recompiled GStreamer (enabling NVIDIA enabled nvcodec plugin), opencv and dlib, and possibly more recent versions of GStreamer and Go.

In this project, we use ducksouplab/debian-gstreamer as a base for:

docker/Dockerfile.code defines the image used to run a container within vscode (Go is installed, but DuckSoup remains to be compiled by the developer when needed)
docker/Dockerfile.build defines an image with Go installed and DuckSoup compiled

Please note that the official DuckSoup image is built from docker/Dockerfile.build. This image is used in particular by deploy-ducksoup, a project that showcases a possible DuckSoup deployment workflow relying on Docker Compose.

DuckSoup Docker image

Build image:

docker build -f docker/Dockerfile.build -t ducksoup:latest .

Supposing we use a deploy user to run the container, prepare data and log folders, to be mounted as volumes in the container:

mkdir data log
chown -R deploy:deploy data log

Run by binding to port 8101 (as an example), setting user and environment variables, mounting volumes and removing the container when stopped:

docker run --name ducksoup_1 \
  -p 8101:8100 \
  -u $(id deploy -u):$(id deploy -g) \
  -e GST_DEBUG=2 \
  -e DUCKSOUP_ALLOWED_WS_ORIGINS=http://localhost:8101 \
  -v $(pwd)/plugins:/app/plugins:ro \
  -v $(pwd)/data:/app/data \
  -v $(pwd)/log:/app/log \
  --rm \
  ducksoup:latest

To enter the container:

docker exec -it ducksoup_1 bash

As an aside, this image is published on Docker Hub as ducksouplab/ducksoup, let's tag it and push it:

docker tag ducksoup ducksouplab/ducksoup
docker push ducksouplab/ducksoup:latest

Add and share extra tag:

docker tag ducksoup:latest ducksouplab/ducksoup:better-tag
docker push ducksouplab/ducksoup:better-tag

With this image, root is the user that launches and owns files in the Docker container. The project deploy-ducksoup shows a way to build a lightweight image on top of this one with another user.

GPU-enabled Docker containers

The nvcodec GStreamer plugin enables NVIDIA GPU accelerated encoding and decoding of H264 video streams.

Here are a few considerations regarding Docker and NVIDIA:

to start with, please check the list of Docker host platforms supported by NVIDIA
regarding needed installations on the host:
1. NVIDIA driver: first check if already installed (try nvidia-smi), if not search for available versions (apt-cache search nvidia-driver) and install (for instance with apt-get install nvidia-driver-460)
2. NVIDIA and Docker: this description tends to show that installing nvidia-container-runtime is sufficient to have Docker containers benefit from NVIDIA GPUs. To do so, update your host repository configuration following these instructions and apt-get install nvidia-container-runtime
3. Restart Docker (systemctl restart docker)
set the desired NVIDIA capabilities within the container thanks to a few environment variables. Regarding DuckSoup, the ducksouplab/debian-gstreamer base image has these already set (so this step should not be necessary)
run the container with GPU enabled:

docker run --name ducksoup_gpu_1 \
  --gpus all \
  -u $(id deploy -u):$(id deploy -g) \
  -e GST_DEBUG=2 \
  -e DUCKSOUP_NVCODEC=true \
  -v $(pwd)/plugins:/app/plugins:ro \
  -v $(pwd)/data:/app/data \
  --rm \
  ducksoup:latest

Credits

Parts of DuckSoup result from interactions within the pion commmunity in general, and from Galène in particular.

The following STUN servers are used by the project: stun.l.google.com:19302 and stun:stun3.l.google.com:19302 (previously stun.stunprotocol.org:3478).

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DuckSoup

DuckSoup server overview

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Controlling effects

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Logs format

Logs message reference

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Run DuckSoup server

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Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 566 Commits
.devcontainer		.devcontainer
config		config
docker		docker
engine		engine
env		env
front		front
frontbuild		frontbuild
gst		gst
helpers		helpers
iceservers		iceservers
logger		logger
plot		plot
sequencing		sequencing
server		server
sfu		sfu
stats		stats
store		store
types		types
.dockerignore		.dockerignore
.eslintrc.json		.eslintrc.json
.gitignore		.gitignore
LICENSE		LICENSE
Makefile		Makefile
README.md		README.md
env.example		env.example
go.mod		go.mod
go.sum		go.sum
main.go		main.go
package.json		package.json
yarn.lock		yarn.lock

License

ducksouplab/ducksoup

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DuckSoup

DuckSoup server overview

DuckSoup player

GStreamer effects

Controlling effects

Player API

Front-ends

DuckSoup server

Build

Front-end dependencies

Settings

DUCKSOUP_MODE=DEV and .env file

Logs configuration

Logs format

Logs message reference

Plots

Run DuckSoup server

Custom GStreamer plugins

Concepts in Go code

Step by step description of a run

Websocket messages

Code within a Docker container

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Using Docker

DuckSoup Docker image

GPU-enabled Docker containers

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