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, RTP and RTCP are standardized protocol that describe how to perform these operations with the help of a server, that is contacted by both readers and publishers in order to negotiate a streaming protocol. The server is then responsible of relaying the publisher streams to the readers.

Features:

• Read and publish live streams via UDP and TCP
• Each stream can have multiple video and audio tracks, encoded in any format
• Publish multiple streams at once, each in a separate path, that can be read by multiple users
• Pull and serve streams from other RTSP servers, always or on-demand (RTSP proxy)
• Make streams secure with usernames and passwords (authentication)
• Run custom commands when clients connect, disconnect, read or publish streams (linux only)
• Compatible with Linux, Windows and Mac, does not require any dependency or interpreter, it's a single executable

Installation and basic usage

1. Download and extract a precompiled binary from the release page.

2. Start the server:

   ./rtsp-simple-server
   

3. 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
   

4. Open the stream. For instance, you can open the stream with VLC:

   vlc rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream
   

   or GStreamer:

   gst-launch-1.0 -v 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. To avoid the option, disable UDP and expose the RTSP port, by creating a file named rtsp-simple-server.yml with the following content:

protocols: [tcp]

and passing it to the container:

docker run --rm -it -v $PWD/rtsp-simple-server.yml:/rtsp-simple-server.yml -p 8554:8554 aler9/rtsp-simple-server

Full configuration file

To see or change the configuration, edit the rtsp-simple-server.yml file, provided with the executable. The default configuration is available here.

Usage as RTSP Proxy

An RTSP proxy is usually deployed in one of these scenarios:

• when there are multiple users that are receiving a stream and the bandwidth is limited, so 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, in this case the proxy is installed in 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.

Convert a webcam into a RTSP server

Edit rtsp-simple-server.yml and replace everything inside section paths with the following content:

paths:
  webcam:
    runOnInit: ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream

After starting the server, the webcam can be opened with rtsp://localhost:8554/webcam. The ffmpeg command works only on Linux; for Windows and Mac equivalents, read the ffmpeg wiki.

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:8554/ondemand

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

rtsp-simple-server is an RTSP server: it publishes existing streams and does not touch them. It is not a media server, that is a far more complex and heavy software that can receive existing streams, re-encode them and publish them.

To change the format, codec or compression of a stream, you can use FFmpeg or Gstreamer together with rtsp-simple-server, obtaining the same features of a media 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:8554/original -b:a 64k -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -b:v 500k -max_muxing_queue_size 1024 -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:8554/compressed

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 receiver.

• A metrics exporter, compatible with Prometheus, can be enabled with the option metrics: yes; then the server can be queried for metrics with Prometheus or with a simple HTTP request:

  wget -qO- localhost:9998
  

  Obtaining:

  clients 23 1596122687740
  publishers 15 1596122687740
  readers 8 1596122687740
  

• A performance monitor, compatible with pprof, can be enabled with the option pprof: yes; then the server can be queried for metrics with pprof-compatible tools, like:

  docker run --rm -it --network=host golang:1.14 go tool pprof -text http://localhost:9999/debug/pprof/goroutine
  docker run --rm -it --network=host golang:1.14 go tool pprof -text http://localhost:9999/debug/pprof/heap
  docker run --rm -it --network=host golang:1.14 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. Use 'stdin' to
                read config from stdin

Compile and run from source

Install Go ≥ 1.12, 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/flaviostutz/rtsp-relay
• https://github.com/pion/sdp (SDP library used internally)
• https://github.com/pion/rtcp (RTCP library used internally)

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