FFMPEG pushed RTMP stream not working on Android & iPhone

Question

I have to make a semi-live-stream. I used Nginx-rtmp module and then pushed content to it via ffmpeg using:

ffmpeg -re -i content.mp4 -r 25 -f fvl \"rtmp://rtmp.         


        

Answer 1

1. Your input video uses H.264 with a high profile.

   If you want compatibility with both iOS and Android you must use the baseline profile. Newer iPhones support the main and high profiles but the Android documentation only mentions baseline:

   -c:v libx264 -profile baseline

2. Don't use the native aac as audio codec, use libfdk_aac since it's the highest quality encoder available for FFmpeg and it will help you produce a valid AAC stream:

   -c:a libfdk_aac

3. Make sure the audio rate is suported. The FLV video format only supports sample rates of 11025, 22050, and 44100.

   -ar 44100

4. The ffprobe shows an unsupported stream Stream #0:1: Data: none. Use map to skip it:

   -map 0:0 -map 0:2

5. (MPEG-TS only) If you use a .ts file as input make sure to remove the AAC ADTS header:

   -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc

Eg:

ffmpeg -re -i content.mp4 -map 0:0 -map 0:2 -c:v libx264 -vprofile baseline -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -r 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a libfdk_aac -ac 2 -ar 44100 -f flv rtmp://...

Answer 2

First, I suggest you add more details about the file (ffprobe) so it could be compared with the server output.
Alternatively, be more strict in your ffmpeg command and set a specific output.
That's a command I use to push RTMP to YouTube:
ffmpeg -i any_file.mp4 -strict experimental -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 44100 -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -g 30 -vb 512k -profile:v main -preset ultrafast -r 30 -f flv -s 854x480 rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/your-channel.stream_code

With you last update, there already is a difference between ffmpeg output and the server's: ffmpeg creates a 25fps stream while ffprobe sees a 20fps stream.
Is there a place in the server you set other output parameters? try setting the ffmpeg output accordingly.

See if changing the ffmpeg output affects the server output, and try go with h264 main profile.

Regarding the ffprobe error message, if your original file also contains 3 streams, perhaps the server doesn't like it so remove that 'Data' stream using map like this:
ffmpeg -i content.mp4 -map 0:0 -map 0:2 ...

Answer 3

RTMP protocol usage is very limited and primarily being used for video recording. There is no reason to use it for playback as mobile devices don't support RTMP natively, you don't think it can be a good idea to advice mobile users to install VLC or similar app on the device?

Plugin nginx-rtmp-module has been incorporated to Nginx+ to make a comprehensive recording media server out of Nginx as a replacement to Wowza Media Server or implement HLS for playaback via HTTP. This plugin can be used with Nginx open source edition.

To make your video content available to mobile devices you have only 2 options, each of them work via HTTP(s), not RTMP:

1. HTTP Live Streaming, see the example:

   location / {
       hls;
       hls_fragment            5s;
       hls_buffers             10 10m;
       hls_mp4_buffer_size     1m;
       hls_mp4_max_buffer_size 5m;
       root /var/video/;
   }
   

2. HTTP pseudo streaming, see the example

   location /video/ {
       mp4;
       mp4_buffer_size       1m;
       mp4_max_buffer_size   5m;
       mp4_limit_rate        on;
       mp4_limit_rate_after  30s;
   }
   

   The other side is security. How to protect the video streaming URL? Pre-generated time-expired URLs is good approach, you can try, see my example there.