rtsp-simple-server
rtsp-simple-server is a simple, ready-to-use and zero-dependency RTSP/RTMP server and proxy, a software that allows users to publish, read and proxy live video and audio streams. RTSP is a specification that describes how to perform these operations with the help of a server, that is contacted by both publishers and readers and relays the publisher's streams to the readers.
Features:
- Publish live streams with RTSP (UDP or TCP mode) or RTMP
- Read live streams with RTSP
- Pull and serve streams from other RTSP / RTMP servers or cameras, always or on-demand (RTSP proxy)
- Each stream can have multiple video and audio tracks, encoded with any codec (including H264, H265, VP8, VP9, MPEG2, MP3, AAC, Opus, PCM)
- Serve multiple streams at once in separate paths
- Encrypt streams with TLS (RTSPS)
- Authenticate readers and publishers
- 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 macOS, does not require any dependency or interpreter, it's a single executable
Table of contents
- Installation
- Basic usage
- Advanced usage and FAQs
- Configuration
- Encryption
- Authentication
- Encrypt the configuration
- RTSP proxy mode
- RTMP server
- Publish a webcam
- Publish a Raspberry Pi Camera
- Convert streams to HLS
- Remuxing, re-encoding, compression
- On-demand publishing
- Redirect to another server
- Fallback stream
- Start on boot with systemd
- Monitoring
- Command-line usage
- Compile and run from source
- Links
Installation
Standard
-
Download and extract a precompiled binary from the release page.
-
Start the server:
./rtsp-simple-server
Docker
Download and launch the image:
docker run --rm -it --network=host aler9/rtsp-simple-server
The --network=host
flag is mandatory since Docker can change the source port of UDP packets for routing reasons, and this doesn't allow to find out the publisher of the packets. 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
Basic usage
-
Publish a stream. For instance, you can publish a video/audio 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 rtspclientsink name=s location=rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream filesrc location=file.mp4 ! qtdemux name=d d.video_0 ! queue ! s.sink_0 d.audio_0 ! queue ! s.sink_1
-
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 name=s s. ! application/x-rtp,media=video ! decodebin ! autovideosink s. ! application/x-rtp,media=audio ! decodebin ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! autoaudiosink
or FFmpeg:
ffmpeg -i rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream -c copy output.mp4
Advanced usage and FAQs
Configuration
All the configuration parameters are listed and commented in the configuration file.
There are two ways to change the configuration:
-
By editing the
rtsp-simple-server.yml
file, that is-
included into the release bundle
-
available in the root folder of the Docker image (
/rtsp-simple-server.yml
); it can be overridden in this way:docker run --rm -it --network=host -v $PWD/rtsp-simple-server.yml:/rtsp-simple-server.yml aler9/rtsp-simple-server
-
-
By overriding configuration parameters with environment variables, in the format
RTSP_PARAMNAME
, wherePARAMNAME
is the uppercase name of a parameter. For instance, thertspPort
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
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 RTSP_PATHS_TEST_SOURCE=rtsp://myurl aler9/rtsp-simple-server
The configuration can be changed dinamically 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.
Encryption
Incoming and outgoing streams can be encrypted with TLS (obtaining the RTSPS protocol). A TLS certificate must be installed on the server; if the server is installed on a machine that is publicly accessible from the internet, a certificate can be requested from a Certificate authority by using tools like Certbot; otherwise, a self-signed certificate can be generated with openSSL:
openssl genrsa -out server.key 2048
openssl req -new -x509 -sha256 -key server.key -out server.crt -days 3650
Edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
, and set the protocols
, encrypt
, serverKey
and serverCert
parameters:
protocols: [tcp]
encryption: optional
serverKey: server.key
serverCert: server.crt
Streams can then be published and read with the rtsps
scheme and the 8555
port:
ffmpeg -i rtsps://ip:8555/...
If the client is GStreamer and the server certificate is self signed, remember to disable the certificate validation:
gst-launch-1.0 rtspsrc location=rtsps://ip:8555/... tls-validation-flags=0
If the client is VLC, encryption can't be deployed, since VLC doesn't support it.
Authentication
Edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
all:
publishUser: myuser
publishPass: mypass
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://myuser:mypass@localhost:8554/mystream
It's possible to setup authentication for readers too:
paths:
all:
publishUser: myuser
publishPass: mypass
readUser: user
readPass: userpass
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:
echo -n "userpass" | openssl dgst -binary -sha256 | openssl base64
Then stored with the sha256:
prefix:
paths:
all:
readUser: sha256:j1tsRqDEw9xvq/D7/9tMx6Jh/jMhk3UfjwIB2f1zgMo=
readPass: sha256:BdSWkrdV+ZxFBLUQQY7+7uv9RmiSVA8nrPmjGjJtZQQ=
WARNING: enable encryption or use a VPN to ensure that no one is intercepting the credentials.
Encrypt the configuration
The configuration file can be entirely encrypted for security purposes.
An online encryption tool is available here.
The encryption procedure is the following:
-
NaCL's
crypto_secretbox
function is applied to the content of the configuration. NaCL is a cryptographic library available for C/C++, Go, C# and many other languages; -
The string is prefixed with the nonce;
-
The string is encoded with base64.
After performing the encryption, it's enough to put the base64-encoded result into the configuration file, and launch the server with the RTSP_CONFKEY
variable:
RTSP_CONFKEY=mykey ./rtsp-simple-server
RTSP proxy mode
rtsp-simple-server is also a RTSP and RTMP 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:
paths:
proxied1:
source: rtsp://url1
proxied2:
source: rtsp://url1
It's possible to save bandwidth by enabling the on-demand mode: the stream will be pulled only when at least a client is connected:
paths:
proxied:
source: rtsp://original-url
sourceOnDemand: yes
RTMP server
RTMP is a protocol that is used to read and publish streams, but is less versatile and less efficient than RTSP (doesn't support UDP, encryption, most RTSP codecs, feedback mechanism). If there is need of receiving streams from a software that supports only RTMP (for instance, OBS Studio and DJI drones), it's possible to turn on a RTMP listener:
rtmpEnable: yes
Streams can then be published with the RTMP protocol, for instance with FFmpeg:
ffmpeg -re -stream_loop -1 -i file.ts -c copy -f flv rtmp://localhost/mystream
or GStreamer:
gst-launch-1.0 -v flvmux name=s ! rtmpsink location=rtmp://localhost/mystream filesrc location=file.mp4 ! qtdemux name=d d.video_0 ! queue ! s.video d.audio_0 ! queue ! s.audio
Credentials can be provided by appending to the URL the user
and pass
parameters:
ffmpeg -re -stream_loop -1 -i file.ts -c copy -f flv rtmp://localhost:8554/mystream?user=myuser&pass=mypass
At the moment the RTMP listener supports only the H264 and AAC codecs.
Publish 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/asdasdvideo0 -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH
runOnInitRestart: yes
If the platform is Windows:
paths:
cam:
runOnInit: ffmpeg -f dshow -i video="USB2.0 HD UVC WebCam" -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH
runOnInitRestart: yes
Where USB2.0 HD UVC WebCam
is the name of your webcam, that can be obtained with:
ffmpeg -list_devices true -f dshow -i dummy
After starting the server, the webcam can be reached on rtsp://localhost:8554/cam
.
Publish a Raspberry Pi Camera
Install dependencies:
-
Gstreamer
sudo apt install -y gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-rtsp
-
gst-rpicamsrc, by following instruction here
Then edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
cam:
runOnInit: gst-launch-1.0 rpicamsrc preview=false bitrate=2000000 keyframe-interval=50 ! video/x-h264,width=1920,height=1080,framerate=25/1 ! rtspclientsink location=rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH
runOnInitRestart: yes
After starting the server, the webcam is available on rtsp://localhost:8554/cam
.
Convert streams to HLS
HLS is a media format that allows to embed live streams into web pages, inside standard <video>
HTML tags. To generate HLS whenever someone publishes a stream, edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
all:
runOnPublish: ffmpeg -re -i rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH -c copy -f hls -hls_time 1 -hls_list_size 3 -hls_flags delete_segments -hls_allow_cache 0 stream.m3u8
runOnPublishRestart: yes
The resulting files (stream.m3u8
and a lot of .ts
segments) can be served by a web server.
The example above makes the assumption that published streams are encoded with H264 and AAC, since they are the only codecs supported by HLS; if streams make use of different codecs, they must be converted:
paths:
all:
runOnPublish: ffmpeg -re -i rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH -c:a aac -b:a 64k -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -b:v 500k -f hls -hls_time 1 -hls_list_size 3 -hls_flags delete_segments -hls_allow_cache 0 stream.m3u8
runOnPublishRestart: yes
Remuxing, re-encoding, compression
To change the format, codec or compression of a stream, use FFmpeg or Gstreamer together with rtsp-simple-server. For instance, to re-encode an existing stream, that is available in the /original
path, and publish the resulting stream in the /compressed
path, edit rtsp-simple-server.yml
and replace everything inside section paths
with the following content:
paths:
all:
original:
runOnPublish: ffmpeg -i rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$RTSP_PATH -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -b:v 500k -max_muxing_queue_size 1024 -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/compressed
runOnPublishRestart: yes
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.
Redirect to another server
To redirect to another server, use the redirect
source:
paths:
redirected:
source: redirect
sourceRedirect: rtsp://otherurl/otherpath
Fallback stream
If no one is publishing to the server, readers can be redirected to a fallback path or URL that is serving a fallback stream:
paths:
withfallback:
fallback: /otherpath
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, unzip it, and move the executable and configuration in the system:
sudo mv rtsp-simple-server /usr/local/bin/
sudo mv rtsp-simple-server.yml /usr/local/etc/
Create the service:
sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/rtsp-simple-server.service >/dev/null << EOF
[Unit]
After=network.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/rtsp-simple-server /usr/local/etc/rtsp-simple-server.yml
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
Enable and start the service:
sudo systemctl enable rtsp-simple-server
sudo 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: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
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 โฅ 1.15, download the repository, open a terminal in it and run:
go run .
You can perform the entire operation inside Docker:
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
Conventions