Is this the error everyone else is getting from stre.am?

[nachie]

Hey all,

I know we are switching from VLC to some other method of streaming, but I wanted to post a screenshot of the error we are getting from our stream to confirm that this is indeed the same problem everyone else is having with stre.am

The following error is what we see whenever we go to enter our unique "ffmpeg" code in the ff-prompt command line:



If this is also what everyone else is seeing, then we'll just wait to see how the streaming issue is resolved.

Our concern is that this is a different error than what everyone else is seeing, which would mean that there is something specifically wrong with our setup. We appreciate any help.

Note: we are not having any problems streaming from the payload to VLC on the laptop; the issue is only when trying to get it up on stre.am

[Skylar MSGC]

So this is a tricky beast. Ffmpeg is a beast that can have a myriad of different errors for one thing. I would say that posting this on a ffmpeg forum might be a good choice. I don't think there are many other people that are messing with ffmpeg at this time besides a few of us a MSU.

By the signs of this error I would say the pipeline that you tried to create with ffmpeg is incomplete and the video isn't getting to your destination. I would say something about the encoding process is wrong. Would you like to post your ffmpeg code EXCEPT your RTP key!!! I can take a look at it and see if there is anything wrong with it just by glance.

[leviw]

There seems to be an ongoing battle between ffmpeg and avconv. Both tools seem very similar and I believe the commands are interchangeable. As far as I can tell, ffmpeg may be deprecated in favor of avconv, but I also see that ffmpeg released an update as recently as august 2016, so maybe both projects are still kicking.  It's all very confusingly linux.

[grayeagle]

About 4-5 years ago ffmpeg development stalled when the project leader departed, then after a year or so another group of developers forked the ffmpeg code and started developing avconv/avlib. Late in 2015 ffmpeg found a new project leader who recruited a new development team and ffmpeg development restarted. This situation is just the reality of open-source development.
I've used both ffmpeg and avconv in several embedded software projects, and have found no differences in capabilities. My opinion is that avconv is a bit more polished due to the more intense recent development, but unless you require one of the obscure codecs either can do the job.

[leviw]

Thanks for the background info. As far as I can tell, you need to build ffmpeg from source on the pi, but you can install avconv using apt-get. I've been playing with them and looking for suitable parameters to stream the camera back to the ground station via rtsp, but haven't figured it out yet. (ffmpeg and avconv parameters are borderline black magic.)

If anyone gets it working, I'd like to see what parameters you use.

[Skylar MSGC]

I would recommend this guide to installing the latest version of ffmpeg onto your raspberry pi. Make sure that you read all the directions while going through it.

www.jeffreythompson.org/blog/2014/11/13/installing-ffmpeg-for-raspberry-pi/

You can also install it from the repository (E.G. sudo apt-get install ffmpeg) but this is a old outdated version of ffmpeg so I would not recommend that method.

If you have already installed through apt-get and want to uninstall it to try the guide here you can uninstall it with the command sudo apt-get uninstall ffmpeg.

I will warn you that building ffmpeg from source takes a bit of time. I would say ~30 min of building it minimum depending on your internet speed. If you are planning on following this guide make sure that you have a decent amount of time reserved for it. (2-4 hours)

[leviw]

Thanks Skylar, we have a practice launch coming up and are busy getting ready for that, but I'd like to give this a shot sometime soon.

Has anyone found a good combination of parameters to stream via rtsp using ffmpeg or avconv?

[Skylar MSGC]

You could give something like this a try, ffmpeg is picky when it comes to parameters, btu if you match your baud rate it should smooth out the video some

ffmpeg -i rtsp://192.168.1.3:8080/ -acodec copy -vcodec copy -f flv -b:v [matchyourbaudrateonthepi e.g 1024k] rtmp://media.stre.am:1935/live/[RTSPKEY]

On the raspberry pi the baud rate can be changed in the shell to start the streaming command.