ffserver – FFmpeg (original) (raw)

Introduction
1. 1. Input sources
Running ffserver
Connecting your input sources
Viewing your streams
Creating the configuration file
Examples of configuration files
1. 1. Sample ffserver configuration file
    1. Streaming H.264 video with AAC audio in FLV format
    2. Streaming Theora video with Vorbis audio in Ogg format

Warning: ffserver has been removed on 2018-01-06. If you still need it checkout commit 2ca65fc or use the 3.4 release branch. The original documentation has been archived and can be downloaded as HTML or PDF while the sample ffserver configuration file can be found below. We can provide no support for ffserver.

Or try an alternative such as mkvserver_mk2.

Introduction

If you need to stream your audio/video content over the internet, you'll usually need a streaming (broadcasting) server, one of which is ffserver. It is able to collect multiple input sources (usually ffmpeg applications) and transcode/remux/broadcast each of them using multiple output streams. The simple diagram is shown on the image below:

Various input sources (ffmpeg applications) can be used to "feed" the broadcasting server (ffserver) with multimedia content that will be distributed to multiple clients for viewing. The purpose of the above image is to visually show the ability to separate parts of your streaming system into pieces that can be deployed around the world, allowing you to broadcast various live events without the need to change the structure of your streaming media system.

Let's take a closer look of ffserver, to better describe its possibilities. Consider the following image:

There are several elements shown on the image. Let's name them all first:

Input sources (I)
Feeds (F)
Streams (S)
Media players (P)

Input sources

These elements are not part of internal structure of ffserver tool, but rather represent external applications (usually ffmpeg), which can send audio/video streams to ffserver that will be distributed (broadcast) to all the viewers (media players). Since ffmpeg is mostly used as an input source, we'll describe it here in this document.

Input sources will connect to ffserver and bind themselves with one or more feeds if those feeds are not bound with some other input source at that moment. Binding one input source to multiple feeds is possible and makes sense only if the input source can produce different stream input for each feed it is bound to. It's useless for the input source to provide the same stream input to several feeds, since ffserver already has got a way of associating a single feed to multiple output streams.

Feeds

Feed element is an internal part of ffserver which has a purpose to associate one input source with one or more output streams. The possibility to associate a feed with more output streams is useful when you want to stream one input source (for example, your webcam with audio) using several different output formats (for example, streaming a full HD video and a small-size preview video for mobile phones) at the same time. Shortly speaking, each feed element logically represents each of your input sources. It can be considered as an "input jack" of ffserver, to which you connect your audio/video sources.

Streams

A stream element is internal part of ffserver and represents a connection point for all your viewers who wish to get a specific stream. For example, if you want to stream one full HD video and a small-size preview video for mobile phones, you will create one feed element (to connect your input to) and associate it with two stream elements (which will define different frame size, encoding type and/or output format). Each stream element can handle multiple connecting clients, just like one web server can handle multiple web clients. It can be considered as an "output jack" of ffserver, to which your viewers (media players) can connect to view your audio/video stream. The obvious difference between a feed element and a stream element (between input/output jack) is that a single stream element can handle multiple connections with viewers, while a single feed element is always connected to only one input source.

Media players

Media player elements are not internal part of ffserver. They just represent your viewers from the "outside world" that are connecting to the various stream elements to view your multimedia content. Some of the popular media players are: ffplay, VLC, mpv, Windows Media Player, etc.

Running ffserver

To be able to successfully start ffserver, you'll need a valid configuration file first. Once you create a valid config file, you can start ffserver simply by running the following command:

ffserver -f /etc/ffserver.conf

Depending on your configuration file, your ffserver will start or not :) But more often it will not start until you debug all the issues that usually occur, including syntax errors, so you'll most probably want to run your ffserver in debug mode with "-d" option, until you sort out everything, like this:

ffserver -d -f /etc/ffserver.conf

You can always get a full list of options with:

ffserver --help

When you finally build a valid configuration file, you'll want to run your ffserver in the background (as a daemon), which can be accomplished using either a trailing ampersand character (&) in a shell command or more conveniently you can comment out "NoDaemon" directive inside your config file (works on Windows too).

Connecting your input sources

Once your ffserver is up and running, it's time to connect input sources to it. Without input sources, your ffserver is not going to broadcast anything to the outside world and will be pretty much useless. So, let's see how we can connect input sources to ffserver. The simplest way is to use the ffmpeg tool and the general syntax for such command is:

ffmpeg

Of course, if you want to use one input source (ffmpeg) and bind it to multiple feeds (if you like to have only one application started), you might use:

ffmpeg

but, keep in mind that, if that input source crashes, all its bound feeds will become unavailable. So it's a good practice to use one input source (ffmpeg) pear each feed (1-1).

The parameter "<feed URL>" has got the following form:

http://:/

All these things are defined in your ffserver configuration file:

<ffserver_ip_address_or_host_name> - using the "BindAddress" directive
<ffserver_port> - using the "Port" directive
<feed_name> - using the "<Feed>" block

Let's assume that we want to stream our webcam video + audio to our friends. We will simply run an ffmpeg command line that will capture our webcam video and audio input and forward it to ffserver. The command line will look something like this:

ffmpeg
-f v4l2 -s 320x240 -r 25 -i /dev/video0
-f alsa -ac 1 -i hw:0
http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm

This is the same thing as this:

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -s 320x240 -r 25 -i /dev/video0 -f alsa -ac 1 -i hw:0 http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm

but it looks better and makes it more clear to understand each part of the command line.

The first part "-f v4l2 -s 320x240 -r 25 -i /dev/video0" represents the first input for ffmpeg and captures our webcam video. For more info, you can read more about How to capture a webcam input.
The second part "-f alsa -ac 1 -i hw:0" represents the second input for ffmpeg and captures our audio, depending on our system audio configuration. For more info, you can read more about Capturing audio with FFmpeg and ALSA.
The last, but not the least important, part "http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm" represents the feed URL, which tells ffmpeg to connect to ffserver and send it the audio + video streams for broadcast. In this example we used the hostname "localhost" which means that everything is running on our computer, but if you need to feed the live online ffserver, you'll need to change the "localhost" to the real host name or IP address of your ffserver computer. Also make sure that your feed name ends with ".ffm" and if it's not the case, then add "-f ffm" before your feed URL, to manually specify the output format (because ffmpeg won't be able to figure it out automatically any more), like this "-f ffm http://localhost:8090/blah.bleh".

As soon as you type the command above, you should see ffmpeg displaying some statistics about your input streams and counting output frames, which is a pretty good sign that everything works (so far).

For this example, you would need at least the following things defined in your config file (three dots "..." represent the other data that is irrelevant for this topic):

Port 8090 BindAddress 0.0.0.0

...

...

...

Viewing your streams

If you've done all the steps so far without errors, you're now ready to view your streams. The simplest way to do so is to use ffplay to connect to ffserver and view a specific stream. The general syntax for such command is:

ffplay

The parameter "<stream URL>" has got the following form:

http://:/

All these things are defined in your ffserver configuration file:

<ffserver_ip_address_or_host_name> - using the "BindAddress" directive
<ffserver_port> - using the "Port" directive
<stream_name> - using the "<Stream>" block

For example if you have appropriate stream element defined in your ffserver configuration file, you could type:

ffplay http://localhost:8090/test1.mpg

and your stream should appear (depending on the encoding used and caching enforced) relatively shortly in a matter of seconds. In this example we used the host name "localhost" which means that everything is running on our computer, but if you need to view streams from the live online ffserver, you'll need to change the "localhost" to the real host name or IP address of ffserver computer.

For this example, you would need at least the following things defined in your config file (three dots "..." represent the other data that is irrelevant for this topic):

Port 8090 BindAddress 0.0.0.0

...

...

...

Creating the configuration file

It would be very wise to start off reading the sample configuration file below. It is self-documented with a lot of comments and it is a good starting point for beginners, since it contains various examples too. Also, refer to man ffserver and ffserver -h or download the archived documentation: HTML or PDF. In general, the configuration file is consisted of global directives, list of feed elements, list of stream elements and a specification of a special status stream element, which is used to provide a way for you to view the status of all your running streams.

Examples of configuration files

Sample ffserver configuration file

Port on which the server is listening. You must select a different

port from your standard HTTP web server if it is running on the same

computer.

Port 8090

Address on which the server is bound. Only useful if you have

several network interfaces.

BindAddress 0.0.0.0

Number of simultaneous HTTP connections that can be handled. It has

to be defined before the MaxClients parameter, since it defines the

MaxClients maximum limit.

MaxHTTPConnections 2000

Number of simultaneous requests that can be handled. Since FFServer

is very fast, it is more likely that you will want to leave this high

and use MaxBandwidth, below.

MaxClients 1000

This the maximum amount of kbit/sec that you are prepared to

consume when streaming to clients.

MaxBandwidth 1000

Access log file (uses standard Apache log file format)

'-' is the standard output.

CustomLog -

Suppress that if you want to launch ffserver as a daemon.

NoDaemon

##################################################################

Definition of the live feeds. Each live feed contains one video

and/or audio sequence coming from an ffmpeg encoder or another

ffserver. This sequence may be encoded simultaneously with several

codecs at several resolutions.

You must use 'ffmpeg' to send a live feed to ffserver. In this

example, you can type:

ffmpeg http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm

ffserver can also do time shifting. It means that it can stream any

previously recorded live stream. The request should contain:

"http://xxxx?date=[YYYY-MM-DDT][[HH:]MM:]SS[.m...]".You must specify

a path where the feed is stored on disk. You also specify the

maximum size of the feed, where zero means unlimited. Default:

File=/tmp/feed_name.ffm FileMaxSize=5M

File /tmp/feed1.ffm FileMaxSize 200K

You could specify

ReadOnlyFile /saved/specialvideo.ffm

This marks the file as readonly and it will not be deleted or updated.

Specify launch in order to start ffmpeg automatically.

First ffmpeg must be defined with an appropriate path if needed,

after that options can follow, but avoid adding the http:// field

#Launch ffmpeg

Only allow connections from localhost to the feed.

ACL allow 127.0.0.1

##################################################################

Now you can define each stream which will be generated from the

original audio and video stream. Each format has a filename (here

'test1.mpg'). FFServer will send this stream when answering a

request containing this filename.

coming from live feed 'feed1'

Feed feed1.ffm

Format of the stream : you can choose among:

mpeg : MPEG-1 multiplexed video and audio

mpegvideo : only MPEG-1 video

mp2 : MPEG-2 audio (use AudioCodec to select layer 2 and 3 codec)

ogg : Ogg format (Vorbis audio codec)

rm : RealNetworks-compatible stream. Multiplexed audio and video.

ra : RealNetworks-compatible stream. Audio only.

mpjpeg : Multipart JPEG (works with Netscape without any plugin)

jpeg : Generate a single JPEG image.

asf : ASF compatible streaming (Windows Media Player format).

swf : Macromedia Flash compatible stream

avi : AVI format (MPEG-4 video, MPEG audio sound)

Format mpeg

Bitrate for the audio stream. Codecs usually support only a few

different bitrates.

AudioBitRate 32

Number of audio channels: 1 = mono, 2 = stereo

AudioChannels 1

Sampling frequency for audio. When using low bitrates, you should

lower this frequency to 22050 or 11025. The supported frequencies

depend on the selected audio codec.

AudioSampleRate 44100

Bitrate for the video stream

VideoBitRate 64

Ratecontrol buffer size

VideoBufferSize 40

Number of frames per second

VideoFrameRate 3

Size of the video frame: WxH (default: 160x128)

The following abbreviations are defined: sqcif, qcif, cif, 4cif, qqvga,

qvga, vga, svga, xga, uxga, qxga, sxga, qsxga, hsxga, wvga, wxga, wsxga,

wuxga, woxga, wqsxga, wquxga, whsxga, whuxga, cga, ega, hd480, hd720,

hd1080

VideoSize 160x128

Transmit only intra frames (useful for low bitrates, but kills frame rate).

#VideoIntraOnly

If non-intra only, an intra frame is transmitted every VideoGopSize

frames. Video synchronization can only begin at an intra frame.

VideoGopSize 12

More MPEG-4 parameters

VideoHighQuality

Video4MotionVector

Choose your codecs:

#AudioCodec mp2 #VideoCodec mpeg1video

Suppress audio

#NoAudio

Suppress video

#NoVideo

#VideoQMin 3 #VideoQMax 31

Set this to the number of seconds backwards in time to start. Note that

most players will buffer 5-10 seconds of video, and also you need to allow

for a keyframe to appear in the data stream.

#Preroll 15

ACL:

You can allow ranges of addresses (or single addresses)

#ACL ALLOW

You can deny ranges of addresses (or single addresses)

#ACL DENY

You can repeat the ACL allow/deny as often as you like. It is on a per

stream basis. The first match defines the action. If there are no matches,

then the default is the inverse of the last ACL statement.

Thus 'ACL allow localhost' only allows access from localhost.

'ACL deny 1.0.0.0 1.255.255.255' would deny the whole of network 1 and

allow everybody else.

##################################################################

Example streams

Multipart JPEG

# #Feed feed1.ffm #Format mpjpeg #VideoFrameRate 2 #VideoIntraOnly #NoAudio #Strict -1 #

Single JPEG

# #Feed feed1.ffm #Format jpeg #VideoFrameRate 2 #VideoIntraOnly ##VideoSize 352x240 #NoAudio #Strict -1 #

Flash

# #Feed feed1.ffm #Format swf #VideoFrameRate 2 #VideoIntraOnly #NoAudio #

ASF compatible

Feed feed1.ffm Format asf VideoFrameRate 15 VideoSize 352x240 VideoBitRate 256 VideoBufferSize 40 VideoGopSize 30 AudioBitRate 64 StartSendOnKey

MP3 audio

# #Feed feed1.ffm #Format mp2 #AudioCodec mp3 #AudioBitRate 64 #AudioChannels 1 #AudioSampleRate 44100 #NoVideo #

Ogg Vorbis audio

# #Feed feed1.ffm #Title "Stream title" #AudioBitRate 64 #AudioChannels 2 #AudioSampleRate 44100 #NoVideo #

Real with audio only at 32 kbits

# #Feed feed1.ffm #Format rm #AudioBitRate 32 #NoVideo #NoAudio #

Real with audio and video at 64 kbits

# #Feed feed1.ffm #Format rm #AudioBitRate 32 #VideoBitRate 128 #VideoFrameRate 25 #VideoGopSize 25 #NoAudio #

##################################################################

A stream coming from a file: you only need to set the input

filename and optionally a new format. Supported conversions:

AVI -> ASF

# #File "/usr/local/httpd/htdocs/tlive.rm" #NoAudio #

# #File "/usr/local/httpd/htdocs/test.asf" #NoAudio #Author "Me" #Copyright "Super MegaCorp" #Title "Test stream from disk" #Comment "Test comment" #

##################################################################

RTSP examples

You can access this stream with the RTSP URL:

rtsp://localhost:5454/test1-rtsp.mpg

A non-standard RTSP redirector is also created. Its URL is:

http://localhost:8090/test1-rtsp.rtsp

# #Format rtp #File "/usr/local/httpd/htdocs/test1.mpg" #

Transcode an incoming live feed to another live feed,

using libx264 and video presets

# #Format rtp #Feed feed1.ffm #VideoCodec libx264 #VideoFrameRate 24 #VideoBitRate 100 #VideoSize 480x272 #AVPresetVideo default #AVPresetVideo baseline #AVOptionVideo flags +global_header # #AudioCodec libfaac #AudioBitRate 32 #AudioChannels 2 #AudioSampleRate 22050 #AVOptionAudio flags +global_header #

##################################################################

SDP/multicast examples

If you want to send your stream in multicast, you must set the

multicast address with MulticastAddress. The port and the TTL can

also be set.

An SDP file is automatically generated by ffserver by adding the

'sdp' extension to the stream name (here

http://localhost:8090/test1-sdp.sdp). You should usually give this

file to your player to play the stream.

The 'NoLoop' option can be used to avoid looping when the stream is

terminated.

# #Format rtp #File "/usr/local/httpd/htdocs/test1.mpg" #MulticastAddress 224.124.0.1 #MulticastPort 5000 #MulticastTTL 16 #NoLoop #

##################################################################

Special streams

Server status

Format status

Only allow local people to get the status

ACL allow localhost ACL allow 192.168.0.0 192.168.255.255

#FaviconURL http://pond1.gladstonefamily.net:8080/favicon.ico

Redirect index.html to the appropriate site

URL http://www.ffmpeg.org/

Streaming H.264 video with AAC audio in FLV format

Port 8090 BindAddress 0.0.0.0 MaxHTTPConnections 2000 MaxClients 1000 MaxBandwidth 1000 CustomLog - #NoDaemon

File /tmp/feed1.ffm FileMaxSize 200K ACL allow 127.0.0.1

if you want to use mpegts format instead of flv

then change "live.flv" to "live.ts"

and also change "Format flv" to "Format mpegts"

Format flv Feed feed1.ffm

VideoCodec libx264
VideoFrameRate 30
VideoBitRate 512
VideoSize 320x240
AVOptionVideo crf 23
AVOptionVideo preset medium
# for more info on crf/preset options, type: x264 --help
AVOptionVideo flags +global_header

AudioCodec aac
Strict -2
AudioBitRate 128
AudioChannels 2
AudioSampleRate 44100
AVOptionAudio flags +global_header

##################################################################

Special streams

################################################################## Format status # Only allow local people to get the status ACL allow localhost ACL allow 192.168.0.0 192.168.255.255

Redirect index.html to the appropriate site

URL http://www.ffmpeg.org/ ##################################################################

Streaming Theora video with Vorbis audio in Ogg format

Port 8090 BindAddress 0.0.0.0 MaxHTTPConnections 2000 MaxClients 1000 MaxBandwidth 1000 CustomLog - #NoDaemon

File /tmp/feed1.ffm FileMaxSize 200K ACL allow 127.0.0.1 Format ogg Feed feed1.ffm

VideoCodec libtheora
VideoFrameRate 24
VideoBitRate 512
VideoSize 320x240
VideoQMin 1
VideoQMax 31
VideoGopSize 12
Preroll 0
AVOptionVideo flags +global_header

AudioCodec libvorbis
AudioBitRate 64
AudioChannels 2
AudioSampleRate 44100
AVOptionAudio flags +global_header

##################################################################

Special streams

################################################################## Format status # Only allow local people to get the status ACL allow localhost ACL allow 192.168.0.0 192.168.255.255

Redirect index.html to the appropriate site

URL http://www.ffmpeg.org/ ##################################################################