_MediaMTX_ (formerly _rtsp-simple-server_) is a ready-to-use and zero-dependency real-time media server and media proxy that allows users to publish, read and proxy live video and audio streams. It has been conceived as a "media broker", a message broker that routes media streams.
_rtsp-simple-server_ has been rebranded as _MediaMTX_. The reason is pretty obvious: this project started as a RTSP server but has evolved into a much more versatile product that is not tied to the RTSP protocol anymore. Nothing will change regarding license, features and backward compatibility.
The `--network=host` flag is mandatory since Docker can change the source port of UDP packets for routing reasons, and this doesn't allow the RTSP server to identify the senders of the packets. This issue can be avoided by disabling the UDP transport protocol:
1. In a x86 Linux system, download the OpenWRT SDK corresponding to the wanted OpenWRT version and target from the [OpenWRT website](https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/) and extract it.
2. Open a terminal in the SDK folder and setup the SDK:
FFmpeg can publish a stream to the server in multiple ways (RTSP client, RTMP client, UDP/MPEG-TS, WebRTC with WHIP). The recommended one consists in publishing as a [RTSP client](#rtsp-clients):
The RTSP protocol supports multiple underlying transport protocols, each with its own characteristics (see [RTSP-specific features](#rtsp-specific-features)). You can set the transport protocol by using the `rtsp_transport` flag, for instance, in order to use TCP:
GStreamer can publish a stream to the server in multiple ways (RTSP client, RTMP client, UDP/MPEG-TS, WebRTC with WHIP). The recommended one consists in publishing as a [RTSP client](#rtsp-clients):
The RTSP protocol supports multiple underlying transport protocols, each with its own characteristics (see [RTSP-specific features](#rtsp-specific-features)). You can set the transport protocol by using the `protocols` flag:
OBS Studio can publish to the server as a [RTMP client](#rtmp-clients). In `Settings -> Stream` (or in the Auto-configuration Wizard), use the following parameters:
For more advanced setups, you can create and serve a custom web page by starting from the [source code of the publish page](internal/core/webrtc_publish_index.html).
_MediaMTX_ natively supports the Raspberry Pi Camera, enabling high-quality and low-latency video streaming from the camera to any user, for any purpose. There are a couple of requirements:
1. The server must run on a Raspberry Pi, with Raspberry Pi OS bullseye or newer as operative system. Both 32 bit and 64 bit operative systems are supported.
2. Make sure that the legacy camera stack is disabled. Type `sudo raspi-config`, then go to `Interfacing options`, `enable/disable legacy camera support`, choose `no`. Reboot the system.
If you want to run the server inside Docker, you need to use the `latest-rpi` image (that already contains required libraries) and launch the container with some additional flags:
Find the audio card of the microfone and take note of its name, for instance `default:CARD=U0x46d0x809`. Then use GStreamer inside `runOnReady` to read the video stream, add audio and publish the new stream to another path:
WebRTC is an API that makes use of a set of protocols and methods to connect two clients together and allow them to exchange real-time media or data streams. You can publish a stream with WebRTC and a web browser by visiting:
WHIP is a WebRTC extensions that allows to publish streams by using a URL, without passing through a web page. This allows to use WebRTC as a general purpose streaming protocol. If you are using a software that supports WHIP (for instance, latest versions of OBS Studio), you can publish a stream to the server by using this URL:
Depending on the network it may be difficult to establish a connection between server and clients, see [WebRTC-specific features](#webrtc-specific-features) for remediations.
RTSP is a protocol that allows to publish and read streams. It supports different underlying transport protocols and allows to encrypt streams in transit (see [RTSP-specific features](#rtsp-specific-features)). In order to publish a stream with the RTSP protocol, you can use this URL:
Most IP cameras expose their video stream by using a RTSP server that is embedded into the camera itself. You can use _MediaMTX_ to connect to one or multiple existing RTSP servers and read their video streams:
```yml
paths:
proxied:
# url of the source stream, in the format rtsp://user:pass@host:port/path
The resulting stream will be available in path `/proxied`.
The server supports any number of source streams (count is just limited by hardware capability) it's enough to add additional entries to the paths section:
RTMP is a protocol that allows to read and publish streams, but is less versatile and less efficient than RTSP and WebRTC (doesn't support UDP, doesn't support most RTSP codecs, doesn't support feedback mechanism). Streams can be published to the server by using the URL:
HLS is a streaming protocol that works by splitting streams into segments, and by serving these segments and a playlist with the HTTP protocol. You can use _MediaMTX_ to connect to one or multiple existing HLS servers and read their video streams:
```yml
paths:
proxied:
# url of the playlist of the stream, in the format http://user:pass@host:port/path
The server supports ingesting UDP/MPEG-TS packets (i.e. MPEG-TS packets sent with UDP). Packets can be unicast, broadcast or multicast. For instance, you can generate a multicast UDP/MPEG-TS stream with GStreamer:
FFmpeg can read a stream from the server in multiple ways (RTSP, RTMP, HLS, WebRTC with WHEP). The recommended one consists in reading with [RTSP](#rtsp):
The RTSP protocol supports multiple underlying transport protocols, each with its own characteristics (see [RTSP-specific features](#rtsp-specific-features)). You can set the transport protocol by using the `rtsp_transport` flag:
GStreamer can read a stream from the server in multiple ways (RTSP, RTMP, HLS, WebRTC with WHEP). The recommended one consists in reading with [RTSP](#rtsp):
The RTSP protocol supports multiple underlying transport protocols, each with its own characteristics (see [RTSP-specific features](#rtsp-specific-features)). You can change the transport protocol by using the `protocols` flag:
The RTSP protocol supports multiple underlying transport protocols, each with its own characteristics (see [RTSP-specific features](#rtsp-specific-features)).
The VLC shipped with Ubuntu 21.10 doesn't support playing RTSP due to a license issue (see [here](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=982299) and [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69766748/cvlc-cannot-play-rtsp-omxplayer-instead-can)). To fix the issue, remove the default VLC instance and install the snap version:
At the moment VLC doesn't support reading encrypted RTSP streams. However, you can use a proxy like [stunnel](https://www.stunnel.org) or [nginx](https://nginx.org/) or a dedicated _MediaMTX_ instance to decrypt streams before reading them.
For more advanced setups, you can create and serve a custom web page by starting from the [source code of the read page](internal/core/webrtc_read_index.html).
Web browsers can also read a stream with the [HLS protocol](#hls). Latency is higher but there are less problems related to connectivity between server and clients, furthermore the server load can be balanced by using a common HTTP CDN (like CloudFront or Cloudflare), and this allows to handle readers in the order of millions. Visit the web page:
WebRTC is an API that makes use of a set of protocols and methods to connect two clients together and allow them to exchange real-time media or data streams. You can read a stream with WebRTC and a web browser by visiting:
WHEP is a WebRTC extensions that allows to read streams by using a URL, without passing through a web page. This allows to use WebRTC as a general purpose streaming protocol. If you are using a software that supports WHEP, you can read a stream from the server by using this URL:
Depending on the network it may be difficult to establish a connection between server and clients, see [WebRTC-specific features](#webrtc-specific-features) for remediations.
RTSP is a protocol that allows to publish and read streams. It supports different underlying transport protocols and allows to encrypt streams in transit (see [RTSP-specific features](#rtsp-specific-features)). In order to read a stream with the RTSP protocol, you can use this URL:
The RTSP protocol doesn't introduce any latency by itself. Latency is usually introduced by clients, that put frames in a buffer to compensate network fluctuations. In order to decrease latency, the best way consists in tuning the client. For instance, latency can be decreased with VLC by decreasing the Network caching parameter, that is available in the Open network stream dialog or alternatively ca be set with the command line:
* The stream throughput is too big and the stream can't be sent correctly with the UDP transport. UDP is more performant, faster and more efficient than TCP, but doesn't have a retransmission mechanism, that is needed in case of streams that need a large bandwidth. A solution consists in switching to TCP:
* The stream throughput is too big to be handled by the network between server and readers. Upgrade the network or decrease the stream bitrate by re-encoding it.
RTMP is a protocol that allows to read and publish streams, but is less versatile and less efficient than RTSP and WebRTC ((doesn't support UDP, doesn't support most RTSP codecs, doesn't support feedback mechanism)). Streams can be read from the server by using the URL:
HLS is a protocol that works by splitting streams into segments, and by serving these segments and a playlist with the HTTP protocol. You can use _MediaMTX_ to generate a HLS stream, that is accessible through a web page:
and can also be accessed without using the browsers, by software that supports the HLS protocol (for instance VLC or _MediaMTX_ itself) by using this URL:
Although the server can produce HLS with a variety of video and audio codecs (that are listed at the beginning of the README), not all browsers can read all codecs. You can check what codecs your browser can read by visiting this page:
<https://jsfiddle.net/4msrhudv>
If you want to support most browsers, you can to re-encode the stream by using the H264 and AAC codecs, for instance by using FFmpeg:
Low-Latency HLS is a recently standardized variant of the protocol that allows to greatly reduce playback latency. It works by splitting segments into parts, that are served before the segment is complete. LL-HLS is enabled by default. If the stream is not shown correctly, try tuning the hlsPartDuration parameter, for instance:
```yml
hlsPartDuration: 500ms
```
##### Compatibility with Apple devices
In order to correctly display Low-Latency HLS streams in Safari running on Apple devices (iOS or macOS), a TLS certificate is needed and can be generated with OpenSSL:
Keep also in mind that not all H264 video streams can be played on Apple Devices due to some intrinsic properties (distance between I-Frames, profile). If the video can't be played correctly, you can either:
* re-encode it by following instructions in this README
* disable the Low-latency variant of HLS and go back to the legacy variant:
```yml
hlsVariant: mpegts
```
##### Latency
in HLS, latency is introduced since a client must wait for the server to generate segments before downloading them. This latency amounts to 500ms-3s when the low-latency HLS variant is enabled (and it is by default), otherwise amounts to 1-15secs.
To decrease the latency, you can:
* try decreasing the hlsPartDuration parameter
* try decreasing the hlsSegmentDuration parameter
* The segment duration is influenced by the interval between the IDR frames of the video track. An IDR frame is a frame that can be decoded independently from the others. The server changes the segment duration in order to include at least one IDR frame into each segment. Therefore, you need to decrease the interval between the IDR frames. This can be done in two ways:
* if the stream is being hardware-generated (i.e. by a camera), there's usually a setting called Key-Frame Interval in the camera configuration page
* otherwise, the stream must be re-encoded. It's possible to tune the IDR frame interval by using ffmpeg's -g option:
All the configuration parameters are listed and commented in the [configuration file](mediamtx.yml).
There are 3 ways to change the configuration:
1. By editing the `mediamtx.yml` file, that is
* included into the release bundle
* available in the root folder of the Docker image (`/mediamtx.yml`); it can be overridden in this way:
```
docker run --rm -it --network=host -v $PWD/mediamtx.yml:/mediamtx.yml bluenviron/mediamtx
```
The configuration can be changed dynamically when the server is running (hot reloading) by writing to the configuration file. Changes are detected and applied without disconnecting existing clients, whenever it's possible.
2. By overriding configuration parameters with environment variables, in the format `MTX_PARAMNAME`, where `PARAMNAME` is the uppercase name of a parameter. For instance, the `rtspAddress` parameter can be overridden in the following way:
```
MTX_RTSPADDRESS="127.0.0.1:8554" ./mediamtx
```
Parameters that have array as value can be overriden by setting a comma-separated list. For example:
```
MTX_PROTOCOLS="tcp,udp"
```
Parameters in maps can be overridden by using underscores, in the following way:
```
MTX_PATHS_TEST_SOURCE=rtsp://myurl ./mediamtx
```
This method is particularly useful when using Docker; any configuration parameter can be changed by passing environment variables with the `-e` flag:
```
docker run --rm -it --network=host -e MTX_PATHS_TEST_SOURCE=rtsp://myurl bluenviron/mediamtx
```
3. By using the [API](#api).
### Authentication
Edit `mediamtx.yml` and replace everything inside section `paths` with the following content:
If storing plain credentials in the configuration file is a security problem, username and passwords can be stored as sha256-hashed strings; a string must be hashed with sha256 and encoded with base64:
This happens because a RTSP client doesn't provide credentials until it is asked to. In order to receive the credentials, the authentication server must reply with status code `401`, then the client will send credentials.
1. NaCL's `crypto_secretbox` function is applied to the content of the configuration. NaCL is a cryptographic library available for [C/C++](https://nacl.cr.yp.to/secretbox.html), [Go](https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/crypto/nacl/secretbox), [C#](https://github.com/somdoron/NaCl.net) and many other languages;
To change the format, codec or compression of a stream, use _FFmpeg_ or _GStreamer_ together with _MediaMTX_. For instance, to re-encode an existing stream, that is available in the `/original` path, and publish the resulting stream in the `/compressed` path, edit `mediamtx.yml` and replace everything inside section `paths` with the following content:
The command inserted into `runOnDemand` will start only when a client requests the path `ondemand`, therefore the file will start streaming only when requested.
Systemd is the service manager used by Ubuntu, Debian and many other Linux distributions, and allows to launch _MediaMTX_ on boot.
Download a release bundle from the [release page](https://github.com/bluenviron/mediamtx/releases), unzip it, and move the executable and configuration in the system:
Download the [WinSW v2 executable](https://github.com/winsw/winsw/releases/download/v2.11.0/WinSW-x64.exe) and place it into the same folder of `mediamtx.exe`.
* UDP: the most performant, but doesn't work when there's a NAT/firewall between server and clients. It doesn't support encryption.
* UDP-multicast: allows to save bandwidth when clients are all in the same LAN, by sending packets once to a fixed multicast IP. It doesn't support encryption.
* TCP: the most versatile, does support encryption.
Incoming and outgoing RTSP streams can be encrypted with TLS, obtaining the RTSPS protocol. A TLS certificate is needed and can be generated with OpenSSL:
Be aware that RTMPS is currently unsupported by all major players. However, you can use a proxy like [stunnel](https://www.stunnel.org) or [nginx](https://nginx.org/) or a dedicated _MediaMTX_ instance to decrypt streams before reading them.
If the server is hosted inside a container or is behind a NAT, additional configuration is required in order to allow the two WebRTC parts (the browser and the server) to establish a connection (WebRTC/ICE connection).
A first method consists into forcing all WebRTC/ICE connections to pass through a single UDP server port, by using the parameters:
```yml
# public IP of the server
webrtcICEHostNAT1To1IPs: [192.168.x.x]
# any port of choice
webrtcICEUDPMuxAddress: :8189
```
The NAT / container must then be configured in order to route all incoming UDP packets on port 8189 to the server. If you're using Docker, this can be achieved with the flag:
The NAT / container must then be configured in order to redirect all incoming TCP packets on port 8189 to the server. If you're using Docker, this can be achieved with the flag:
Finally, if none of these methods work, you can force all WebRTC/ICE connections to pass through a TURN server, like coturn, that must be configured externally. The server address and credentials must be set in the configuration file:
If the server uses a secret-based authentication (for instance, coturn with the use-auth-secret option), it must be configured by using AUTH_SECRET as username, and the secret as password:
where secret is the secret of the TURN server. MediaMTX will generate a set of credentials by using the secret, and credentials will be sent to clients before the WebRTC/ICE connection is established.
The API listens on `apiAddress`, that by default is `127.0.0.1:9997`; for instance, to obtain a list of active paths, run:
```
curl http://127.0.0.1:9997/v2/paths/list
```
Full documentation of the API is available on the [dedicated site](https://bluenviron.github.io/mediamtx/).
### Metrics
A metrics exporter, compatible with [Prometheus](https://prometheus.io/), can be enabled with the parameter `metrics: yes`; then the server can be queried for metrics with Prometheus or with a simple HTTP request:
A performance monitor, compatible with pprof, can be enabled with the parameter `pprof: yes`; then the server can be queried for metrics with pprof-compatible tools, like:
```
go tool pprof -text http://localhost:9999/debug/pprof/goroutine
go tool pprof -text http://localhost:9999/debug/pprof/heap
go tool pprof -text http://localhost:9999/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30
```
## Compile from source
### Standard
Install Go ≥ 1.20, download the repository, open a terminal in it and run:
```sh
go build .
```
The command will produce the `mediamtx` binary.
### Raspberry Pi
The server can be compiled with native support for the Raspberry Pi Camera. Compilation must be performed on a Raspberry Pi, with the following dependencies:
* Go ≥ 1.20
*`libcamera-dev`
*`libfreetype-dev`
*`xxd`
*`patchelf`
Download the repository, open a terminal in it and run:
