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TSDuck

TSDuck is available in the NetActuate Marketplace as a one-click, open-source appliance you can deploy into any NetActuate PoP. Headless MPEG-TS toolkit for analysis, remux and SCTE-35, driven over SSH. It is grouped under the Media & Streaming category.

What It Does​

TSDuck is a free, open-source MPEG transport-stream toolkit for digital TV, streaming and broadcast engineering. It bundles dozens of command-line tools and the tsp stream-processing pipeline to analyze, monitor, remux, filter and manipulate MPEG transport streams, either as recorded files or live IP/UDP streams, including full SCTE-35 splice (ad-insertion) support.

Key features

  • tsp pipeline processor: chain input, packet-processing and output plugins (IP/UDP, RTP, SRT, files, and many transforms)
  • Analysis and inspection: tsanalyze, tstables, tspsi, tsdump, tscharset
  • SCTE-35 ad-insertion: monitor, extract and inject splice_info with splicemonitor and spliceinject
  • PSI/SI table compile and decompile (tstabcomp) with a rich XML model
  • Remux, PID remapping, service extraction, scrambling and more

Use cases

  • Debugging and QoE analysis of live or recorded transport streams
  • Validating SCTE-35 ad-insertion signaling in a delivery chain
  • Lightweight remux, filtering and protocol conversion at the edge

Why run it on the NetActuate edge Running TSDuck in a PoP close to your origin or your IP multicast sources lets you capture, analyze and transform streams next to where they live, without hauling multi-gigabit transport streams back to a central lab.

This is a headless appliance: there is no web console, you drive the tools over SSH. A co-located landing page on the management port documents the CLI, shows the result of a first-boot tsp self-check, and links a bundled sample transport stream at /usr/share/tsduck/demo/sample.ts so you can run a demo analysis in seconds. TSDuck is shipped unmodified from the official upstream .deb.

Vendor and Project​

TSDuck is an open-source project, offered here under the Open Source listing with best-effort community support.

NetActuate supports the underlying infrastructure. Application-level support follows the listing SLA class (open-source, best effort).

Sizing​

vCPURAMDisk
Minimum11 GB10 GB
Recommended22 GB20 GB

No VPU (hardware acceleration) is required for this appliance. Choose a size at deploy based on your expected load.

Configuration Fields​

When you deploy, you provide these fields. They are written into the appliance at first boot.

FieldRequiredDefaultNotes
Landing page portNo80TCP port for the co-located landing/instructions page served by nginx (default 80). TSDuck itself is a headless CLI toolkit reached over SSH; no other network service is exposed.

Using the Appliance​

Get started

  1. Open the landing page. Browse to http://YOUR_VM_IP/ (or your seeded landing port) for the CLI reference and the first-boot tsp self-check (also at http://YOUR_VM_IP/health.json).
  2. Connect over SSH. ssh <your-user>@YOUR_VM_IP using the SSH key the platform injected at deploy (this is a headless CLI appliance: no web console, no admin login).
  3. Run a demo analysis. A sample stream ships at /usr/share/tsduck/demo/sample.ts:
    • tstables /usr/share/tsduck/demo/sample.ts lists the PSI/SI tables
    • tsanalyze /usr/share/tsduck/demo/sample.ts gives a full report
  4. SCTE-35 pipelines. Point splicemonitor at your own live stream, e.g. tsp -I ip 230.1.2.3:1234 -P splicemonitor --all-commands -O drop.

Full documentation: https://tsduck.io/ .

FAQ​

Is there a software license fee? No. TSDuck is open source and free to run. You pay only for the NetActuate infrastructure and bandwidth.

Which port does the appliance serve on? The primary service is published on port 80 by default; see the configuration fields for any adjustable ports.

Who supports it? NetActuate operates the underlying infrastructure. The application itself is community-supported open source (best-effort SLA class).

Version and Changelog​

VersionStatusReleased
3.44-4676Current (default)2026-07-14

Deploy​

Need Help?​

Contact support@netactuate.com or open a support ticket from the portal.