I am working with a video stream (no audio) from an ip camera on Ubuntu 14.04. Also i am a beginner with Ubuntu and everything on it. Everything was going great with a camera that has these parameters (from FFMPEG):
Input #0, rtsp, from 'rtsp://*private*:8900/live.sdp': 0B f=0/0
Metadata:
title : RTSP server
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Main), yuv420p(progressive), 352x192, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 180k tbc
But then i changed to a newer camera, which has these parameters:
Input #0, rtsp, from 'rtsp://*private*/media/video2':0B f=0/0
Metadata:
title : VCP IPC Realtime stream
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuvj420p(pc, bt709, progressive), 1280x720, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
My C++ program uses OpenCV3 to process the stream. By default OpenCV uses ffmpeg to decode and display the stream with function VideoCapture.
VideoCapture vc;
vc.open(input_stream);
while ((vc >> frame), !frame.empty()) {
*do work*
}
With the new camera stream i get errors like these (from ffmpeg):
[h264 @ 0x7c6980] cabac decode of qscale diff failed at 41 38
[h264 @ 0x7c6980] error while decoding MB 41 38, bytestream (3572)
[h264 @ 0x7c6980] left block unavailable for requested intra mode at 0 44
[h264 @ 0x7c6980] error while decoding MB 0 44, bytestream (4933)
[h264 @ 0x7bc2c0] SEI type 25 truncated at 208
[h264 @ 0x7bfaa0] SEI type 25 truncated at 206
[h264 @ 0x7c6980] left block unavailable for requested intra mode at 0 18
[h264 @ 0x7c6980] error while decoding MB 0 18, bytestream (14717)
The image sometimes is glitched, sometimes completely frozen. After a few seconds to a few minutes the stream freezes completely without an error. I tried appending ?tcp to the input stream, but the video still froze without an error after ~10 seconds. However on vlc it plays perfectly. I installed the newest version (3.2.2) of ffmpeg player with
./configure --enable-gpl --enable-libx264
Now playing directly with ffplay (instead of launching from source code with OpenCV function VideoCapture), the stream plays better, doesn't freeze, but sometimes still displays warnings:
[NULL @ 0x7f834c008c00] SEI type 25 size 896 truncated at 320=1/1
[h264 @ 0x7f834c0d5d20] SEI type 25 size 896 truncated at 319=1/1
[rtsp @ 0x7f834c0008c0] max delay reached. need to consume packet
[rtsp @ 0x7f834c0008c0] RTP: missed 1 packets
[h264 @ 0x7f834c094740] concealing 675 DC, 675 AC, 675 MV errors in P frame
[NULL @ 0x7f834c008c00] SEI type 25 size 896 truncated at 320=1/1
Changing the camera hardware is not an option. The camera can be set to encode to h265 or mjpeg. When encoding to mjpeg it can output 5 fps, which is not enough. Decoding to a static video is not an option either, because i need to display real time results about the stream. Maybe i should switch to some other decoder and player? From my research i conclude that i have these options:
Somehow get OpenCV to use the ffmpeg player from another directory, where it is compiled with libx264
Somehow get OpenCV to use libvlc instead of ffmpeg
One example of switching to vlc is here, but i don't understand it well enough to say if that is what i need. Or maybe i should be parsing the stream in code? I don't rule out that this could be some basic problem due to a lack of dependencies, because, as i said, i'm a beginner with Ubuntu.
- Use vlc to preprocess the stream, as suggested here.
This is probably slow, which again is bad for real time results. Any suggestions and coments will be appreciated.