How to play RTSP stream under Linux for the BOSCH AutoDome Junior HD IVA camera?

Question

I have a AutoDome Junior HD IVA camera. How do I play RTSP stream in my Linux distro? I tried VLC but it fails. Is there any other reliable tool?

Follow up:

Try 1: fail

$ mplayer rtsp://192.168.1.10:554
MPlayer SVN-r33251-4.6.0 (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing rtsp://192.168.1.10:554.
Connecting to server 192.168.1.10[192.168.1.10]: 554...

rtsp_session: unsupported RTSP server. Server type is 'unknown'.
STREAM_LIVE555, URL: rtsp://192.168.1.10:554
Stream not seekable!
 file format detected.
Initiated "video/H264" RTP subsession on port 43230
demux_rtp: Failed to guess the video frame rate
VIDEO:  [H264]  0x0  0bpp  0.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
FPS not specified in the header or invalid, use the -fps option.
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
V:   0.0   0/  0 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0                                    


Exiting... (End of file)

Try 2: fail

$ mplayer mms://192.168.1.10:554
MPlayer SVN-r33251-4.6.0 (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing mms://192.168.1.10:554.
STREAM_ASF, URL: mms://192.168.1.10:554
Connecting to server 192.168.1.10[192.168.1.10]: 554...

Connected
read error:: Resource temporarily unavailable
pre-header read failed
Connecting to server 192.168.1.10[192.168.1.10]: 554...

unknown ASF streaming type
Failed, exiting.
Connecting to server 192.168.1.10[192.168.1.10]: 554...

Cache size set to 320 KBytes
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   nop_streaming_read error : Resource temporarily unavailable
Stream not seekable!
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   nop_streaming_read error : Resource temporarily unavailable
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   

Cache not filling, consider increasing -cache and/or -cache-min!
nop_streaming_read error : Resource temporarily unavailable
Cache not filling, consider increasing -cache and/or -cache-min!
nop_streaming_read error : Resource temporarily unavailable
Cache not filling, consider increasing -cache and/or -cache-min!
nop_streaming_read error : Resource temporarily unavailable
Cache not filling, consider increasing -cache and/or -cache-min!
nop_streaming_read error : Resource temporarily unavailable
Cache not filling, consider increasing -cache and/or -cache-min!
Invalid seek to negative position!


Exiting... (End of file)

Answer 1

I've found that the ffmpeg utilities are often more reliable. Try:

$ ffplay 'rtsp://username:password@ip_address:port/url'

Also note that IP camera RTSP streams frequently require a username and password.

The defaults for Foscam-compatible cameras: port is 88 and url is either videoMain, videoSub, or audio.

More details are available at the ffmpeg manual. Interestingly, ffmpeg instructions don't seem to include documentation about including username and password fields, which are supported.

Answer 2

Try mplayer, it's usually the audio and video player that supports the widest range of formats.

If you have a supposedly RTSP source which is actually an HTTP URL, first retrieve the contents of the URL; you'll get a file containing just another URL, this time rtsp:// (sometimes you get another HTTP URL that you need to follow too). Pass the rtsp:// URL to mplayer on its command line.

There are servers out there (and, for all I know, hardware devices too) that serve files containing a rtsp:// URL over HTTP, but then serve content in the MMS protocol¹. This is for compatibility with some older Microsoft players (my memory is hazy over the details), but it breaks clients that believe that RTSP is RTSP and MMS is MMS. If you obtain an rtsp:// URL that doesn't work at all, try replacing the scheme with mms://.

¹ _{No relation with Multimedia Messaging Service a.k.a. video SMS.}

Answer 3

Assuming this is indeed an RTSP stream, you should be able to open it with vlc like this:

$ vlc rtsp://192.168.1.10:554/[Stream Name]

If a username/password is required, vlc accepts such in the URL. For example:

rtps://username:[email protected]:554/[Stream Name]

It is also possible to specify the stream through the vlc GUI interface:

Media > Open Network Stream ...

In the Open Media panel, on the Network tab, enter the URL in the "Please enter a network URL" box.

The stream name should be mentioned somewhere in the user interface (UI) for the camera system. For example, a Swann camera DVR UI mentions the stream name is formatted like (but this naturally may differ by manufacturer and model number):

ch01/0

Where ch01 is the camera, and 0 identifies a stream the camera makes available.

Based on information for BOSCH (and many other brands) found here, Bosch Autodome cameras may expect a stream name like:

video

-or-

rtsp_tunnel

Answer 4

Check out the latest version of the AutoDome Junior HD firmware. (At this time: 4.54.0024.)

I found information about RTSP in Bosch's IP cameras here (pfd).

If you put a password in the camera, you must type the username and password in VLC.

I'm testing with the VIP-X1XF E encoder. Works great, with audio, in VLC (on Windows7).