.github | ||
client | ||
clientman | ||
conf | ||
confenv | ||
confwatcher | ||
externalcmd | ||
loghandler | ||
metrics | ||
path | ||
pathman | ||
pprof | ||
servertcp | ||
serverudp | ||
sourcertmp | ||
sourcertsp | ||
stats | ||
stress | ||
syslog | ||
testimages | ||
.dockerignore | ||
.gitignore | ||
.travis.yml | ||
go.mod | ||
go.sum | ||
LICENSE | ||
main_test.go | ||
main.go | ||
Makefile | ||
README.md | ||
rtsp-simple-server.yml |
rtsp-simple-server
rtsp-simple-server is a simple, ready-to-use and zero-dependency RTSP server and RTSP proxy, a software that allows multiple users to publish and read live video and audio streams over time. RTSP is a standard protocol that describes how to perform these operations with the help of a server, that is contacted by both readers and publishers and relays the publisher streams to the readers.
Features:
- Read and publish live streams with UDP and TCP
- Each stream can have multiple video and audio tracks, encoded with any codec (including H264, H265, VP8, VP9, MP3, AAC, Opus, PCM)
- Serve multiple streams at once in separate paths
- Pull and serve streams from other RTSP or RTMP servers, always or on-demand (RTSP proxy)
- Authenticate readers and publishers separately
- Redirect to other RTSP servers (load balancing)
- Run custom commands when clients connect, disconnect, read or publish streams
- Reload the configuration without disconnecting existing clients (hot reloading)
- Compatible with Linux, Windows and Mac, does not require any dependency or interpreter, it's a single executable
Installation and basic usage
-
Download and extract a precompiled binary from the release page.
-
Start the server:
./rtsp-simple-server
-
Publish a stream. For instance, you can publish a video file with FFmpeg:
ffmpeg -re -stream_loop -1 -i file.ts -c copy -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream
or GStreamer:
gst-launch-1.0 filesrc location=file.mp4 ! qtdemux ! rtspclientsink location=rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream
-
Open the stream. For instance, you can open the stream with VLC:
vlc rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream
or GStreamer:
gst-launch-1.0 rtspsrc location=rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream ! rtph264depay ! decodebin ! autovideosink
or FFmpeg:
ffmpeg -i rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream -c copy output.mp4
Advanced usage and FAQs
Usage with Docker
Download and launch the image:
docker run --rm -it --network=host aler9/rtsp-simple-server
The --network=host
argument is mandatory since Docker can change the source port of UDP packets for routing reasons, and this makes RTSP routing impossible. This issue can be avoided by disabling UDP and exposing the RTSP port:
docker run --rm -it -e RTSP_PROTOCOLS=tcp -p 8554:8554 aler9/rtsp-simple-server
Configuration
To see or change the configuration, edit the rtsp-simple-server.yml
file, that is:
- included the release bundle
- available in the root folder of the Docker image (
/rtsp-simple-server.yml
) - also available here.
Every configuration parameter can be overridden by environment variables, in the format RTSP_PARAMNAME
, where PARAMNAME
is the uppercase name of a parameter. For instance, the rtspPort
parameter can be overridden in the following way:
RTSP_RTSPPORT=8555 ./rtsp-simple-server
Parameters in maps can be overridden by using underscores, in the following way:
RTSP_PATHS_TEST_SOURCE=rtsp://myurl ./rtsp-simple-server
The configuration can be changed dinamically when the server is running (hot reloading) by editing the configuration file, Changes are detected and applied without disconnecting existing clients, whenever is possible.
RTSP proxy mode
rtsp-simple-server
is also an RTSP proxy, that is usually deployed in one of these scenarios:
- when there are multiple users that are receiving a stream and the bandwidth is limited; the proxy is used to receive the stream once. Users can then connect to the proxy instead of the original source.
- when there's a NAT / firewall between a stream and the users; the proxy is installed on the NAT and makes the stream available to the outside world.
Edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
proxied:
# url of the source stream, in the format rtsp://user:pass@host:port/path
source: rtsp://original-url
After starting the server, users can connect to rtsp://localhost:8554/proxied
, instead of connecting to the original url. The server supports any number of source streams, it's enough to add additional entries to the paths
section.
Serve a webcam
Edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
cam:
runOnInit: ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH
runOnInitRestart: yes
After starting the server, the webcam is available on rtsp://localhost:8554/cam
. The ffmpeg command works only on Linux; for Windows and Mac equivalents, read the ffmpeg wiki.
Serve a Raspberry Pi Camera
Install dependencies:
-
Gstreamer
sudo apt install -y gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-rtsp
-
gst-rpicamsrc, by following instruction here
Then edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
cam:
runOnInit: gst-launch-1.0 rpicamsrc preview=false bitrate=2000000 keyframe-interval=50 ! video/x-h264,width=1920,height=1080,framerate=25/1 ! rtspclientsink location=rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH
runOnInitRestart: yes
After starting the server, the webcam is available on rtsp://localhost:8554/cam
.
On-demand publishing
Edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
ondemand:
runOnDemand: ffmpeg -re -stream_loop -1 -i file.ts -c copy -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH
runOnDemandRestart: yes
The command inserted into runOnDemand
will start only when a client requests the path ondemand
, therefore the file will start streaming only when requested.
Remuxing, re-encoding, compression
To change the format, codec or compression of a stream, you can use FFmpeg or Gstreamer together with rtsp-simple-server. 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 rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
all:
original:
runOnPublish: ffmpeg -i rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH -b:a 64k -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -b:v 500k -max_muxing_queue_size 1024 -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/compressed
runOnPublishRestart: yes
Authentication
Edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
all:
publishUser: admin
publishPass: mypassword
Only publishers that provide both username and password will be able to proceed:
ffmpeg -re -stream_loop -1 -i file.ts -c copy -f rtsp rtsp://admin:mypassword@localhost:8554/mystream
It's possible to setup authentication for readers too:
paths:
all:
publishUser: admin
publishPass: mypassword
readUser: user
readPass: userpassword
WARNING: RTSP is a plain protocol, and the credentials can be intercepted and read by malicious users (even if hashed, since the only supported hash method is md5, which is broken). If you need a secure channel, use RTSP inside a VPN.
Start on boot with systemd
Systemd is the service manager used by Ubuntu, Debian and many other Linux distributions, and allows to launch rtsp-simple-server on boot.
Download a release bundle from the release page, and put:
rtsp-simple-server
in/usr/local/bin
rtsp-simple-server.yml
in/usr/local/etc
Create a file /etc/systemd/system/rtsp-simple-server.service
with the following content:
[Unit]
After=network.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/rtsp-simple-server /usr/local/etc/rtsp-simple-server.yml
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Enable and start the service with:
systemctl enable rtsp-simple-server
systemctl start rtsp-simple-server
Monitoring
There are multiple ways to monitor the server usage over time:
-
The current number of clients, publishers and readers is printed in each log line; for instance, the line:
2020/01/01 00:00:00 [2/1/1] [client 127.0.0.1:44428] OPTION
means that there are 2 clients, 1 publisher and 1 reader.
-
A metrics exporter, compatible with Prometheus, can be enabled with the parameter
metrics: yes
; then the server can be queried for metrics with Prometheus or with a simple HTTP request:wget -qO- localhost:9998
Obtaining:
rtsp_clients{state="idle"} 2 1596122687740 rtsp_clients{state="publishing"} 15 1596122687740 rtsp_clients{state="reading"} 8 1596122687740 rtsp_sources{type="rtsp",state="idle"} 3 1596122687740 rtsp_sources{type="rtsp",state="running"} 2 1596122687740 rtsp_sources{type="rtmp",state="idle"} 1 1596122687740 rtsp_sources{type="rtmp",state="running"} 0 1596122687740
where:
rtsp_clients{state="idle"}
is the count of clients that are neither publishing nor readingrtsp_clients{state="publishing"}
is the count of clients that are publishingrtsp_clients{state="reading"}
is the count of clients that are readingrtsp_sources{type="rtsp",state="idle"}
is the count of rtsp sources that are not runningrtsp_sources{type="rtsp",state="running"}
is the count of rtsp sources that are runningrtsp_sources{type="rtmp",state="idle"}
is the count of rtmp sources that are not runningrtsp_sources{type="rtmp",state="running"}
is the count of rtmp sources that are running
-
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:docker run --rm -it --network=host golang:1.15 go tool pprof -text http://localhost:9999/debug/pprof/goroutine docker run --rm -it --network=host golang:1.15 go tool pprof -text http://localhost:9999/debug/pprof/heap docker run --rm -it --network=host golang:1.15 go tool pprof -text http://localhost:9999/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30
Full command-line usage
usage: rtsp-simple-server [<flags>]
rtsp-simple-server v0.0.0
RTSP server.
Flags:
--help Show context-sensitive help (also try --help-long and --help-man).
--version print version
Args:
[<confpath>] path to a config file. The default is rtsp-simple-server.yml.
Compile and run from source
Install Go ≥ 1.15, download the repository, open a terminal in it and run:
go run .
You can perform the entire operation inside Docker with:
make run
Links
Related projects
- https://github.com/aler9/gortsplib (RTSP library used internally)
- https://github.com/pion/sdp (SDP library used internally)
- https://github.com/pion/rtcp (RTCP library used internally)
- https://github.com/pion/rtp (RTP library used internally)
- https://github.com/notedit/rtmp (RTMP library used internally)
- https://github.com/flaviostutz/rtsp-relay
IETF Standards
- RTSP 1.0 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2326
- RTSP 2.0 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7826
- HTTP 1.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616