Why am I getting an “Unable to find a suitable output format for 'http://localhost/feed1.ffm'” when using FFmpeg?

Question

After following steps on this blog post to stream video to the web.

But I am unable to stream a video from my Raspberry Pi with Logitech Camera to Linux

I got this error:

"Unable to find a suitable output format for 'http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm' http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm: Invalid argument"

Command:

 ffserver -f /etc/ffserver.conf & ffmpeg -s 600x480 -f video4linux2 -i /dev/video0 http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm

Output:

ffmpeg version N-90077-g56f77b0 Copyright (c) 2000-2018 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 4.9.2 (Raspbian 4.9.2-10)

Configuration:

--arch=armel --target-os=linux --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --enable-nonfree --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis

libavutil 56. 7.101 / 56. 7.101
libavcodec 58. 11.101 / 58. 11.101
libavformat 58. 9.100 / 58. 9.100
libavdevice 58. 1.100 / 58. 1.100
libavfilter 7. 12.100 / 7. 12.100
libswscale 5. 0.101 / 5. 0.101
libswresample 3. 0.101 / 3. 0.101
libpostproc 55. 0.100 / 55. 0.100
ffserver version N-87073-g1c56bec Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 4.9.2 (Raspbian 4.9.2-10)

Configuration:

libavutil 55. 74.100 / 55. 74.100
libavcodec 57.103.101 / 57.103.101
libavformat 57. 78.100 / 57. 78.100
libavdevice 57. 7.101 / 57. 7.101
libavfilter 6.100.100 / 6.100.100
libswscale 4. 7.103 / 4. 7.103
libswresample 2. 8.100 / 2. 8.100

/etc/ffserver.conf:1: Port option is deprecated. Use HTTPPort instead.
/etc/ffserver.conf:3: BindAddress option is deprecated. Use HTTPBindAddress instead.
/etc/ffserver.conf:9: NoDaemon option has no effect. You should remove it.
/etc/ffserver.conf:27: Setting default value for video bit rate tolerance = 20000. Use NoDefaults to disable it.
/etc/ffserver.conf:27: Setting default value for video rate control equation = tex^qComp. Use NoDefaults to disable it.
/etc/ffserver.conf:27: Setting default value for video max rate = 30906320. Use NoDefaults to disable it.
/etc/ffserver.conf:27: Setting default value for video buffer size = 160000. Use NoDefaults to disable it.
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1fe71f0] The V4L2 driver changed the video from 600x480 to 640x480

Input #0, video4linux2,v4l2, from '/dev/video0':
Duration: N/A, start: 16778.275190, bitrate: 147456 kb/s
Stream #0:0: Video: rawvideo (YUY2 / 0x32595559), yuyv422, 640x480, 147456 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 1000k tbn, 1000k tbc
[NULL @ 0x1fe8e60] Unable to find a suitable output format for 'http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm' http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm: Invalid argument
[4]- Exit 1 ffserver -f /etc/ffserver.conf

Solution 1

ffserver has been removed starting from N-89724-g6b35a83 on 2018/01/06. So, you'll need to compile an older build.

Solution 2

ffserver was removed from FFmpeg on 2018-01-06 due to a lack of user and developer interest. The last commit including ffserver is 2ca65fc. If you want to use ffserver you can checkout this commit and compile:

git clone https://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg
cd ffmpeg
git checkout 2ca65fc7b74444edd51d5803a2c1e05a801a6023
./configure
make -j4

• Alternatively, you could use the FFmpeg 3.4 release branch but the above commit is more recent.

• See one of FFmpeg compile guides for more info and instructions on compiling.

• As of writing this answer macOS users can download a static build of FFmpeg 3.4 containing ffserver from Evermeet.

Comments

[Vatsal Patel]

I am a bit novice here, but shouldn't it be working after manually making a ffserver.conf file?

[Gyan]

Your ffmpeg build doesn't know of ffserver, so it doesn't recognize or parse the. ffm

[Giacomo1968]

Just to amplify what @Mulvya is saying, if the modern versions of FFmpeg doesn’t have ffserver there is utterly nothing you can do to fix that via a config file. That said, you should be able to install ffserver on your own in some way. This site explains the process.