ffplayout-engine

The purpose with ffplayout is to provide a 24/7 broadcasting solution that plays a json playlist for every day, while keeping the current playlist editable.

Check ffplayout-gui: web-based GUI for ffplayout.

Features

• have all values in a separate config file
• dynamic playlist
• replace missing playlist or clip with a dummy clip
• playing clips from watched folder
• send emails with error message
• overlay a logo
• trim and fade the last clip, to get full 24 hours, if the duration is less then 6 seconds add a dummy clip
• set custom day start, so you can have playlist for example: from 6am to 6am, instate of 0am to 12pm
• copy mode, for more info's take a look in the Wiki
• normal system requirements and no special tools
• no GPU power is needed
• stream to server or play on desktop

Why not more features?

• ffplayout follows the principle: stability over features!
• ffplayout must be able to run in containers and VMs without problems, so it should be resource-efficient and not use GPU features
• if you have a great feature that needs to be integrated and can be done with ffmpeg - feel free to submit code
• besides that, you can also check the TODO to see if more is planned

Requirements

• python version 3.5+
• python module watchdog (onyl when playlist_mode = False)
• ffmpeg and ffprobe (ffplay if you want to play on desktop)
• RAM and CPU depends on video resolution, minimum 4 threads and 3GB RAM for 720p are recommend

JSON Playlist Example

{
    "channel": "Test 1",
    "date": "2019-03-05",
    "begin": "06:00:00.000",
    "length": "24:00:00.000",
    "program": [{
            "in": 0,
            "out": 647.68,
            "duration": 647.68,
            "source": "/Media/clip1.mp4",
        }, {
            "in": 0,
            "out": 149,
            "duration": 149,
            "source": "/Media/clip2.mp4",
        }, {
            "in": 0,
            "out": 114.72,
            "duration": 114.72,
            "source": "/Media/clip3.mp4",
            "category": "advertisement"
        }, {
            "in": 0,
            "out": 2531.36,
            "duration": 2531.36,
            "source": "/Media/clip4.mp4",
            "category": ""
        }
    ]
}

"begin" and "length" are optional, when you leave begin blank, length check will be ignored and the playlist starts from the begin, without time awareness. If you leave length blank, the validation will not check if the real length of the playlist will match the length value.

Warning:

(Endless) streaming over multiple days will only work when the playlist have both keys and the length of the playlist is 24 hours. If you need only some hours for every day, use a cron job, or something similar.

Source from URL / Live Stream

You can use sources from url or live stream in that way:

...
        {
            "in": 0,
            "out": 149,
            "duration": 149,
            "source": "https://example.org/big_buck_bunny.webm"
        },
...
        {
            "in": 0,
            "out": 2531.36,
            "duration": 0,
            "source": "rtmp://example.org/live/stream"
        }
...

But be careful with it, better test it multiple times!

More informations in Wiki

Installation

• install ffmpeg, ffprobe (and ffplay if you need the preview mode)
• copy ffplayout.py to /usr/local/bin/
• copy ffplayout.conf to /etc/ffplayout/
• create folder with correct permissions for logging (check config)
• copy ffplayout.service to /etc/systemd/system/
• change user in /etc/systemd/system/ffplayout.service
• create playlists folder, in that format: /playlists/year/month
• set variables in config file to your needs
• use get_playlist_from_subfolders.sh /path/to/mp4s/ as a starting point for your playlists (path in script needs to change)
• activate service and start it: sudo systemctl enable ffplayout && sudo systemctl start ffplayout

Start with Arguments

ffplayout also allows the passing of parameters:

• -l, --log for user-defined log file
• -f, --file for playlist file

The entire command could look like this:

python3 ffplayout.py -l ~/ffplayout.log -f ~/playlist.json

Preview Mode on Desktop

For playing on desktop set preview = True in config under [OUT].