How can I get ffserver to work?

Question

I have a mp4 file which I wish to compress, resize and stream via RTSP.

My ffserver.conf file looks like this:

Port 9091
RTSPPort 5454
BindAddress 0.0.0.0
MaxHTTPConnections 2000
MaxClients 1000
MaxBandwidth 1000
CustomLog -
NoDaemon


<Feed feed1.ffm>
 File /tmp/feed1.ffm
 FileMaxSize 500M
</Feed>

<Stream live.mpeg>
 Format rtp
 File "/tmp/rtp.mp4"
 Feed feed1.ffm
 VideoCodec mpeg2video
 VideoFrameRate 15
 VideoBitRate 200
 VideoSize 400x320
 #AudioCodec mp2
 #AudioBitRate 32
 #AudioChannels 2
 #AudioSampleRate 22050
 NoAudio
 #Preroll 10
 ACL allow 127.0.0.1
</Stream>

<Stream stat.html>
 Format status
 # Only allow local people to get the status
 ACL allow localhost
 ACL allow 192.168.0.0 192.168.255.255
</Stream>

From what I understand, I don't need to feed in a video stream using ffmpeg as I am using the File attribute, so ffserver does the work for me?

When I try to use totem to playback the video (ffplay just times-out), I get the following error:

$ totem rtsp://127.0.0.1:5454/live.mpeg
** Message: Error: Could not read from resource.
gstrtspsrc.c(4408): gst_rtspsrc_send (): /GstPlayBin2:play/GstURIDecodeBin:uridecodebin0/GstRTSPSrc:source:
Got error response: 454 (Session Not Found).

ffserver's log looks like this:

$ ffserver -f /tmp/ffserver.conf 
FFserver version 0.6-4:0.6-2ubuntu6, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Oct  5 2010 22:36:53 with gcc 4.4.5
  configuration: --extra-version=4:0.6-2ubuntu6 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-vaapi --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --disable-stripping --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
  WARNING: library configuration mismatch
  libavutil   configuration: --extra-version=4:0.6-2ubuntu3 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libdirac --enable-libgsm --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-vaapi --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --disable-stripping --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-libmp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-x11grab --enable-libfaad --enable-libxvid --enable-libx264 --enable-librtmp --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
  libavcodec  configuration: --extra-version=4:0.6-2ubuntu3 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libdirac --enable-libgsm --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-vaapi --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --disable-stripping --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-libmp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-x11grab --enable-libfaad --enable-libxvid --enable-libx264 --enable-librtmp --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
  libavutil     50.15. 1 / 50.15. 1
  libavcodec    52.72. 2 / 52.72. 2
  libavformat   52.64. 2 / 52.64. 2
  libavdevice   52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
  libavfilter    1.19. 0 /  1.19. 0
  libswscale     0.11. 0 /  0.11. 0
  libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
Sun Oct 10 12:37:20 2010 FFserver started.
Sun Oct 10 12:38:34 2010 127.0.0.1 - - [DESCRIBE] "rtsp://127.0.0.1:5454/live.mpeg RTSP/1.0" 200 166
Sun Oct 10 12:38:38 2010 127.0.0.1:51118 - - "PLAY live.mpeg/streamid=0 RTP/UDP"
Sun Oct 10 12:38:38 2010 127.0.0.1 - - [] " RTP/UDP" 200 0
Sun Oct 10 12:38:43 2010 127.0.0.1 - - [TEARDOWN] "rtsp://127.0.0.1:5454/live.mpeg RTSP/1.0" 200 819
Sun Oct 10 12:38:43 2010 127.0.0.1:0 - - "PLAY live.mpeg/streamid=0 RTP/TCP"
Sun Oct 10 12:38:43 2010 127.0.0.1 - - [] " RTP/TCP" 200 0
Sun Oct 10 12:38:54 2010 127.0.0.1 - - [PLAY] "rtsp://127.0.0.1:5454/live.mpeg RTSP/1.0" 200 621

What am I doing wrong?

Solution

You can achieve resizing, re-encoding to mpeg2 and RTSP streaming with gstreamer, but I didn't manage to change the frame rate. If this is sufficient, here's how:

• Install gst RTSP server development package: sudo apt-get install libgstrtspserver-0.10-dev
• Get a copy of this example launcher
• Compile it with gcc -o test-launch $(pkg-config --cflags --libs gstreamer-0.10 gst-rtsp-server-0.10) test-launch.c
• Start streaming: ./test-launch "( filesrc location=/tmp/rtp.mp4 ! decodebin ! videoscale ! video/x-raw-yuv,width=400,height=320 ! ffenc_mpeg2video ! mpegtsmux ! rtpmp2tpay name=pay0 pt=96 )"
• Watch video: gst-launch-0.10 rtspsrc location=rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/test ! decodebin ! xvimagesink

A few caveats:

• to change the port, you have to add a call to gst_rtsp_server_set_port(server, 9091); in test-launch.c, between lines 44 and 45
• totem reads the stream, but does not display anything, not even error messages
• mplayer does not support the stream type

Comments

[Admin]

URL_HERE was put in the log as my askubuntu account is new and I am not allowed to add more than a single url in my post. It can be replaced with: rtsp://127.0.0.1:5454/live.mpeg

[Admin]

Your question might get a better response from the supperuser site. I recommend migrating it there.

[tommed]

Thank you, I will certainly look into using gstreamer. I won't mark this as the answer yet as the original question was to get ffserver working.. hope that sounds fair! :)

[taneli]

I hope you get it working, one way or the other. I deliberately ignored your choice of software as it seemed to me (after some experiments) that there might be mistakes in the ffserver mpeg2 stream parameters that prohibit this from working at all. But I'd like to be shown wrong.