[Ffmpeg-devel] Any pointers on how to connect to an MJPEG stream?

[Robert Harle]

>> I have a camera that outputs an MJPEG stream to my network  
>> (connecting to http://camera_ip/mjpegstream).  I want to be able to 
>> obtain frames from the video using libavformat.  I can do this from a 
>> video file using av_open_input_file(), but I'm not sure how to 
>> convert to a stream.  At present I have:
>>
>> av_open_input_file(&formatctx, filename, NULL, 0, NULL);
>>
>> I see there is an av_open_input_stream() but I'm unsure as to the 
>> parameters to pass to it, or even if this is intended to do what I want.
>>
>> Can anyone offer a suggestion, or a resource to try?
>
> Try ffmpeg -i http://camera_ip/whatever -t 300 x.mpg , what happens?

It fails, unable recognise the format.  I have to manually specify:

    ffmpeg -f mjpeg -i http://camera_ip/whatever -t 300 x.mpg

and then it works fine.  Similarly, ffplay -f mjpeg <URL> works fine.  
Reading between the lines of your request, is it that 
av_open_input_file() should take a URL and work, but the call fails 
because it can't recognise a format from the URL?

Thanks,
Robert.