[rtmpdump] Compatibility with librtmp?

[Andrew McClure]

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Howard Chu <hyc at highlandsun.com> wrote:

> Andrew McClure wrote:
>
>> Hi. We are developing an RTMP application and are having trouble getting
>> it to
>> interoperate with the librtmp (as used in FFmpeg).
>>
>>
>> Our application acts like a proxy. In our test configuration, we have a
>> port
>> 1936 which accepts RTMP publishing, and a different port 1935 which
>> accepts
>> RTMP playing. Packets received from the publisher connected to port 1936
>> are
>> forwarded to the player connected on port 1935 (with some minimal
>> munging). We
>> have two simple flash applets (written in Flex, using the standard
>> Video/Camera/NetConnection objects) which connect to these ports; one
>> streams
>> video from a webcam, the other plays the video thus streamed.
>>
>>
>> When we try to play video originating in Flex, forwarded through our proxy
>> and
>> played back in Flex, it works. The video appears on the screen.
>>
>>
>> However then we try something different. We compiled a version of ffmpeg
>> (svn
>> r26326) with librtmp (from rtmpdump svn r555). (If there is a better way
>> to
>> test publish with librtmp than this, I would be curious to know.) We try
>> using
>> ffmpeg to publish to our port 1936:
>>
>>
>> ./ffmpeg -loglevel debug -i ~/Downloads/20051210-w50s.flv -re -ac 1
>> -acodec
>> copy -vcodec flv -f copy rtmp://localhost:1936/
>>
>>
>> And then play back the video by connecting the Flex applet to port 1935.
>> We
>> are having a problem where we are able to handshake, understand ffmpeg's
>> publish commands and forward the packets through to the Flex applet as
>> appropriate... *but* the Flex applet does not display video or audio. We
>> get a
>> black windowpane and silence.
>>
>>
>> When we forward the ffmpeg streams, we appear to be doing (or failing to
>> do)
>> something to the RTMP packets such that the Flex player no longer
>> understands
>> the RTMP stream. But of course this problem only occurs with streams
>> generated
>> through ffmpeg. So it appears this is due to some slight difference
>> between
>> the RTMP protocol as implemented by ffmpeg and Flex-- we are compatible
>> with
>> the Flex publisher's notion of RTMP but not ffmpeg's. What I am trying to
>> figure out:
>>
>>
>> - What might this difference in RTMP implementation be, which is causing
>> ffmpeg to apparently not be compatible with our RTMP proxy?
>>
>>
>> - Is there a way to get ffmpeg (or another librtmp tool) to act like a
>> "server", such that our Flex video object could connect directly to
>> ffmpeg,
>> issue a play request, and start receiving a video? I ask this in case the
>> problem is not in fact that we are damaging ffmpeg's stream, but rather
>> that
>> ffmpeg just is not generating data Flex knows how to work with in the
>> first
>> place. (I find this "ffserver" tool, however this does not look like what
>> I am
>> looking for; the docs seem to imply it does RTP/RTSP only, and the html
>> doc
>> also says "It can also stream from files, though that is currently
>> broken.")
>>
>>
>> One possible source of concern is that when the player connects on 1935,
>> it
>> does not see the beginning of the stream-- it comes in after the stream
>> has
>> been waiting a few seconds. However once connected we do wait until we see
>> a
>> keyframe to begin streaming, and we forward a cached copy of the metadata
>> packet at that time.
>>
>>
>> We also did try forcing ffmpeg to publish in codecs I know Flex
>> understands,
>> but it does not help:
>>
>>
>> ./ffmpeg -loglevel debug -i ~/Downloads/20051210-w50s.flv -re -ac 1
>> -acodec
>> nellymoser -vcodec flv -f flv rtmp://localhost:1936/
>>
>>
>> Do you have any suggestions? What are the requirements our application
>> must
>> follow to interoperate with ffmpeg/librtmp? To our understanding we are
>> compatible with the published RTMP spec but the spec is ambiguous on many
>> points.
>>
>>
>> Note, I was unsure the most appropriate place to ask these questions so I
>> also
>> sent this post to the ffmpeg-user list. Thanks.
>>
>
> The last time I checked, ffserver worked fine for serving FLV files over
> http. (There were a few bugs in that before but I fixed them several months
> ago. It's of course entirely possible that someone else has re-broken it
> again since then...)
>
> I've only been using H.264/AAC FLV files, they worked fine the last time I
> tried publishing, but again, that all depends on your clients.
>

Thanks, that's worth exploring, but again my goal here is only to debug
compatibility issues between different RTMP protocol implementations-- we do
not in the long term plan to use ffserver. So if we were serving
ffserver->flex via http, we would be bypassing RTMP paths and thus not
exercising the parts of ffmpeg/librtmp we are interested in...
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