[FFmpeg-user] I'm writing a tutorial involving ffmpeg - could you please fact-check?

[Jim DeLaHunt]

On 2018-02-26 22:53, Pičugins Arsenijs wrote:
> Hi! I'm writing an article detailing streaming to Twitch from a web camera, using ffmpeg.
> I tried to explain the ffmpeg command-line I'm using, however, as I don't know ffmpeg
> that well, my understanding of the command-line itself is limited. Could you please
> see if there's anything obviously (or non-obviously) wrong with the following text?
>
>> First, let's cover a simple streaming case - no sound involved, just video. We have a USB
>> camera (available as /dev/video0), and we have a Twitch RTMP URL, which we
>> should send our stream to. A basic ffmpeg command-line that does the job of is
>> as follows:
>>
>> ffmpeg -f v4l2 -s "$INRES" -r "$FPS" -i /dev/video0 -vcodec h264_omx -g $GOP
>> -keyint_min $FPS -b:v $CBR -minrate "100k" -maxrate $CBR -pix_fmt yuv420p
>> -bufsize "500k" -preset "veryfast" -f flv
>> "rtmp://$SERVER.twitch.tv/app/$STREAM_KEY"
>>
>> That's a lot of parameters for a single command! Let's go through it so that
>> you understand what's going on. First, here's the breakdown of all parts this
>> command-line consists of:
>>
>> ffmpeg {global options} -f {input type} {input options} -i {input} {codec}
>> {codec options} -f {output type} {output}
>>
>> We're only using one global option - "-hide-banner", which tells ffmpeg not to
>> print its version information on start. Our webcam is /dev/video0 - in your
>> case, it might end with another number (say, you're using a laptop with a
>> webcam). To capture video from the webcam, we're using the Video4Linux system
>> and the corresponding ffmpeg plugin called "v4l2", and we tell it the
>> resolution to use and FPS (frames per second) that we want. Twitch requires
>> that we compress our video as H.264 - this would usually be a CPU-intensive
>> task, but Raspberry Pi has hardware H264 encoding support. We can get that
>> support if we use the h264_omx ffmpeg plugin.
>>
>> Even though compression means we don't send full frames all the time, we still
>> need to send a full frame once in a while - packets can get lost and glitches
>> can happen. A frame sent for the image synchronization purpose is called a
>> keyframe - the "-g" parameter tells how often keyframes will be made (say, $GOP
>> is double the $FPS, then a keyframe will be formed each 2 seconds), and the
>> "-keyint_min" parameter allows additional keyframes to appear if necessary
>> (say, the video changes rapidly) This explains the "-g $GOP -keyint_min $FPS"
>> part. Now, what about "-b:v $CBR -minrate "100k" -maxrate $CBR"? These are the
>> h264_omx codec parameters, and they restrict the bitrate of the resulting
>> stream - bitrate is, in our case, how much data we're sending per second.
>>
>> ... [a long not-ffmpeg-related explanation of what bitrates mean and why we need
>> a constant bitrate for Twitch]
>>
>> After all the bitrate-related parameters, we have parameters defining the color
>> encoding scheme (Twitch requires the YUV420 scheme) and buffer size - the
>> buffer in question is the one ffmpeg uses to check whether bitrate is constant
>> enough; setting your "bufsize" to the same value as your bitrate is a good
>> starting point. The last parameter is the compression quality - as in, how much
>> time should be spent on compression. The "fast"-er the preset, the less time is
>> spent compressing and the more bandwidth will be taken by your video - you have
>> options like "veryslow", "slow", "medium", "fast" and "veryfast", and some more
>> in between.
> I'm sorry if this request is taken as asking for too big of a favour (full disclosure: I'm
> getting paid to write this). I just really, really would hate to explain things in a wrong
> way and push it onto the readers, and I hope you can help make a ffmpeg streaming
> tutorial that explains things well (which, in my experience, is a rare occurence).
>
> Cheers!
> Arsenijs
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I have never used ffmpeg for that purpose, so I can't comment much about 
the technical correctness. However, I can give some comments about more 
general topics.

1. Have you used this command, and does it in fact work?  I assume that 
you have, but you didn't say so in your introduction.

2. You use environment variables like $INRES, $FPS, $CBR, but I don't 
see any text that explains they are variables, not literal parameters to 
the command. Nor do I see an explanation of what values they should be 
set to. Nor  do I see an explanation of why these values, but not 
others, are provided as environment variables instead of literally.  I 
imagine it's a good idea to make them variables, but it would help the 
article to explain why.

I hope this helps. Good luck with the article!

-- 
     --Jim DeLaHunt, jdlh at jdlh.com     http://blog.jdlh.com/ (http://jdlh.com/)
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