What steps are needed to stream RTSP from FFmpeg?

Question

What steps are needed to stream RTSP from FFmpeg?

Streaming UDP is not a problem, but as I want to stream to mobile devices which can natively read RTSP streams, I couldn't find any setup which tells what exactly is needed. Do I need an RTSP streaming server like LIVE555 or can I use FFmpeg only?

My Command:

ffmpeg -i space.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -tune zerolatency -crf 18 -f rtsp -muxdelay 0.1 rtsp://192.168.1.200:1234 

I get an Input/Output error.

Do I need a SDP description to use RTSP? And if yes where do I have to put it?

Answer 1

You can use FFserver to stream a video using RTSP.

Just change console syntax to something like this:

ffmpeg -i space.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -tune zerolatency -crf 18 http://localhost:1234/feed1.ffm 

Create a ffserver.config file (sample) where you declare HTTPPort, RTSPPort and SDP stream. Your config file could look like this (some important stuff might be missing):

HTTPPort 1234 RTSPPort 1235  <Feed feed1.ffm>         File /tmp/feed1.ffm         FileMaxSize 2M         ACL allow 127.0.0.1 </Feed>  <Stream test1.sdp>     Feed feed1.ffm     Format rtp     Noaudio     VideoCodec libx264     AVOptionVideo flags +global_header     AVOptionVideo me_range 16     AVOptionVideo qdiff 4     AVOptionVideo qmin 10     AVOptionVideo qmax 51     ACL allow 192.168.0.0 192.168.255.255 </Stream> 

With such setup you can watch the stream with i.e. VLC by typing:

rtsp://192.168.0.xxx:1235/test1.sdp 

Here is the FFserver documentation.

Answer 2

FWIW, I was able to setup a local RTSP server for testing purposes using simple-rtsp-server and ffmpeg following these steps:

1. Create a configuration file for the RTSP server called rtsp-simple-server.yml with this single line:

   protocols: [tcp] 

2. Start the RTSP server as a Docker container:

   $ docker run --rm -it -v $PWD/rtsp-simple-server.yml:/rtsp-simple-server.yml -p 8554:8554 aler9/rtsp-simple-server 

3. Use ffmpeg to stream a video file (looping forever) to the server:

   $ ffmpeg -re -stream_loop -1 -i test.mp4 -f rtsp -rtsp_transport tcp rtsp://localhost:8554/live.stream 

Once you have that running you can use ffplay to view the stream:

$ ffplay -rtsp_transport tcp rtsp://localhost:8554/live.stream 

Note that simple-rtsp-server can also handle UDP streams (i.s.o. TCP) but that's tricky running the server as a Docker container.