Stream live video using nginx

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This blog post is about a nginx rtmp module for turning your nginx

server into a video streaming server.

The official website of the project is located on github at:

https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module/

I use it to stream video from my computer to my nginx server, then

viewers can use `mpv rtmp://perso.pw/gaming` in order to view the

video stream. But the nginx server will also relay to twitch for

more scalability (and some people prefer viewing there for some

reasons).

The module will already be installed with nginx package since OpenBSD

6.6 (not already out at this time).

There is no package for install the rtmp module before 6.6.

On others operating systems, check for something like "nginx-rtmp" or

"rtmp" in an nginx context.

Install nginx on OpenBSD:

pkg_add nginx

Then, add the following to the file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

load_module modules/ngx_rtmp_module.so;

rtmp {

server {

listen 1935;

buflen 10s;

application gaming {

live on;

allow publish 176.32.212.34;

allow publish 175.3.194.6;

deny publish all;

allow play all;

record all;

record_path /htdocs/videos/;

record_suffix %d-%b-%y_%Hh%M.flv;

}

}

}

The previous configuration sample is a simple example allowing

172.32.212.34 and 175.3.194.6 to stream through nginx, and that will

record the videos under /htdocs/videos/ (nginx is chrooted in

/var/www).

You can add the following line in the "application" block to relay the

stream to your Twitch broadcasting server, using your API key.

push rtmp://live-ams.twitch.tv/app/YOUR_API_KEY;

I made a simple scripts generating thumbnails of the videos and

generating a html index file.

Every 10 minutes, a cron check if files have to be generated,

make thumbnails for videos (tries at 05:30 of the video and then

00:03 if it doesn't work, to handle very small videos) and then

create the html.

The script checking for new stuff and starting html generation:

#!/bin/sh

cd /var/www/htdocs/videos

for file in $(find . -mmin +1 -name '*.flv')

do

echo $file

PIC=$(echo $file | sed 's/flv$/jpg/')

if [ ! -f "$PIC" ]

then

ffmpeg -ss 00:05:30 -i "$file" -vframes 1 -q:v 2 "$PIC"

if [ ! -f "$PIC" ]

then

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:03 -i "$file" -vframes 1 -q:v 2 "$PIC"

if [ ! -f "$PIC" ]

then

echo "problem with $file" | mail user@my-tld.com

fi

fi

fi

done

cd ~/dev/videos/ && sh html.sh

This one makes the html:

#!/bin/sh

cd /var/www/htdocs/videos

PER_ROW=3

COUNT=0

cat << EOF > index.html

<html>

<body>

<h1>Replays</h1>

<table>

EOF

for file in $(find . -mmin +3 -name '*.flv')

do

if [ $COUNT -eq 0 ]

then

echo "<tr>" >> index.html

INROW=1

fi

COUNT=$(( COUNT + 1 ))

SIZE=$(ls -lh $file | awk '{ print $5 }')

PIC=$(echo $file | sed 's/flv$/jpg/')

echo $file

echo "<td><a href=\"$file\"><img src=\"$PIC\" width=320 height=240 /><br />$file ($SIZE)</a></td>" >> index.html

if [ $COUNT -eq $PER_ROW ]

then

echo "</tr>" >> index.html

COUNT=0

INROW=0

fi

done

if [ $INROW -eq 1 ]

then

echo "</tr>" >> index.html

fi

cat << EOF >> index.html

</table>

</body>

</html>

EOF