[FFmpeg-user] RTSP to HLS re-stream stops with “No more output streams to write to, finishing.”

[Tim Williams]

Hi All,

Can I assume that nobody knows the answer to this? If that's the case
can I ask for some advice on how to move forward and find a solution, it
seems to me there is a clear bug in ffmpeg since short interruptions (a
few seconds) when using a remote stream causes ffmpeg to stop,
effectively preventing it from being used reliably in such cases. I
can't see how you are ever going to get that degree of reliability
across anything other than a local LAN. I have seen a few other
instances of this problem being reported elsewhere, but there is never a
solution. So my questions are:

- Should I be reporting this to the bug tracker either as bug or a
feature request for an option enabling outputs to cope with a
discontinuity in the input when it comes from a source which might have
gap in the data due to network issues.

- Is ffmpeg fundamentally unsuited to the task of re-streaming a remote
RTSP feed?

- Would running two instances of ffmpeg with the raw video being piped
between them allow the interruptions to be tolerated?

- Should I be using some other tool to read the RTSP stream and then
pipe that into ffmpeg to do the HLS encapsulation?

- Would I be better off running the RTSP>HLS encoding on a machine
located on the local LAN with the segment data then being automatically
synced to the remote server? This seems to defeat the object of having a
streaming protocol like RTSP, but it would isolate ffmpeg from short
network interruptions, which a file sync process will cope with far better.

I'm not expecting ffmpeg to tolerate big interruptions, we're talking
about a few seconds here and I'm not worried about frame drops during
the interruptions, I just want to avoid having to repeatedly restart
ffmpeg, I had about 15 restarts today during ~4 hours of streaming, many
of which caused client playback to stall. If ffmpeg could be made to
tolerate the interruption, then playback wouldn't stall and all the
viewer would see is a glitch in the picture.

Any help would be much appreciated, I've spent many hours trying and
failing to solve this!

Tim W

-- 
Tim Williams BSc MSc MBCS
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