ffplayout/docs/preview_stream.md

Preview Stream

When you are using the web frontend, maybe you wonder how you get a preview in the player. The default installation creates a HLS playlist and the player using this one, but most of the time the HLS mode is not used, instead the stream output mode is activated.

So if you stream to a external server, you have different options to get a preview stream for you player. The simplest one would be, if you get a m3u8 playlist address from your external target, like: https://example.org/live/stream.m3u8 this you can use in the configuration section from the frontend.

Another option would be (which is not testet), to add a HLS output option to your streaming parameters.

The next option can be, that you install a rtmp server locally and create here your preview stream. In the following lines this is described in more detail.

The ffplayout engine has no special preview config parameters, but you can add your settings to the output_param, like:

    -s 512x288
    -c:v libx264
    -crf 24
    -x264-params keyint=50:min-keyint=25:scenecut=-1
    -maxrate 800k
    -bufsize 1600k
    -preset ultrafast
    -tune zerolatency
    -profile:v Main
    -level 3.1
    -c:a aac
    -ar 44100
    -b:a 128k
    -flags +global_header
    -f flv rtmp://preview.local/live/stream
    ...

In this documentation we suspect, that you are using ffplayout-frontend and that you using SRS at least for the preview stream. In the past we used HLS for the preview, but now it is possible to also use HTTP-FLV for less latency.

To get this working we have to follow some steps. ffplayout engine needs a direction where it can stream on and SRS need a virtual host for the rtmp input. Because both runs on the same machine, we use for that a redirection in the /etc/hosts file:

If you want to use HLS as preview, replace rtmp://preview.local/live/stream with rtmp://127.0.0.1/live/stream and you can skip the redirection in the hosts file.

...
127.0.0.1   preview.local

Add this line to /etc/hosts ans save it.

Next step is to compile and install SRS:

# install some tool for compiling
apt install curl wget net-tools git build-essential autoconf automake libtool pkg-config gperf libssl-dev

cd /opt/

# get SRS
git clone https://github.com/ossrs/srs.git

cd srs/trunk

# get correct branch
git checkout 4.0release

./configure --ffmpeg-fit=off

make -j4

# install SRS to /usr/local/srs
make install

Now we need a systemd service, to startup SRS automatically. Create the file:

/etc/systemd/system/srs.service

with this content:

Description=SRS
Documentation=https://github.com/ossrs/srs/wiki
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStartPre=/usr/local/srs/objs/srs -t -c /etc/srs/srs.conf
ExecStart=/usr/local/srs/objs/srs -c /etc/srs/srs.conf
ExecStop=/bin/kill -TERM \$MAINPID
ExecReload=/bin/kill -1 \$MAINPID
Restart=always
RestartSec=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then create the config for SRS under /etc/srs/srs.conf with this content:

listen              1935;
max_connections     20;
daemon              on;
pid                 /usr/local/srs/objs/srs.pid;
srs_log_tank        console; # file;
srs_log_file        /var/log/srs.log;
ff_log_dir          /tmp;
srs_log_level       error;

http_server {
    enabled         on;
    listen          127.0.0.1:8080;
    dir             ./objs/nginx/html;
}

stats {
    network         0;
    disk            sda vda xvda xvdb;
}

vhost preview.local {
    http_remux {
        enabled     on;
        mount       [vhost]/[app]/[stream].flv;
    }
}

# for normal HLS streaming
vhost __defaultVhost__ {
    enabled             on;

    play {
        mix_correct     on;
    }

    hls {
        enabled         on;
        hls_path        /var/www/srs;
        hls_fragment    6;
        hls_window      3600;
        hls_cleanup     on;
        hls_dispose     0;
        hls_m3u8_file   live/stream.m3u8;
        hls_ts_file     live/stream-[seq].ts;
    }
}

Now you can enable and start SRS with: systemctl enable --now srs and check if it is running: systemctl status srs

Configure Nginx

We assume that you have already installed nginx and you are using it already for the frontend. So open the frontend config /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ffplayout.conf and add a new location to it:

location /preview/stream.flv {
    proxy_pass http://preview.local:8080/live/stream.flv;
}

Full config looks like:

server {
    listen 80;

    server_name ffplayout.example.org;

    gzip on;
    gzip_types text/plain application/xml text/css application/javascript;
    gzip_min_length 1000;

    charset utf-8;

    client_max_body_size 7000M; # should be desirable value

    add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" always;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_read_timeout 36000s;
        proxy_connect_timeout 36000s;
        proxy_send_timeout 36000s;
        proxy_buffer_size 128k;
        proxy_buffers 4 256k;
        proxy_busy_buffers_size 256k;
        send_timeout 36000s;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8787;
    }

    location /live/ {
        alias /var/www/srs/live/;
    }

    location /preview/stream.flv {
        # HTTP-FLV preview
        proxy_pass http://preview.local:8080/live/stream.flv;
    }
}

Of course in production you should have a HTTPS directive to, but this step is up to you.

Restart Nginx.

You can (re)start ffplayout and when you setup everything correct it should run without errors.

You can go now in your frontend configuration and change the player_url to: http://[domain or IP]/preview/stream.flv or http://[domain or IP]/live/stream.m3u8, save and reload the page. When you go now to the player tap you should see the preview video.