Video from RTSP camera gets corrupted

[nimble99]

Dear Vitamin D,

I am evaluating your software, as I would like to purchase to record higher resolution.
My camera streams only RTSP/mpeg4, and after about 24 hours of the software running, VitaminD seems to corrupt the rendering of the video. This means that because of all the image corruption, the motion detection goes crazy and floods my email address.
I have attached a picture showing the corruption, and also VLC rendering the SAME stream, so you can see that the camera itself (video source) is not corrupted.

Thank you

cameraartifacts_cropped.jpg

screenshot of Vitamin D, and VLC with same RTSP stream

(162.88 KiB) Downloaded 5676 times

[ryan]

Hi nimble99,

What camera are you using? Is it one listed by default in VDV, or did you provide the stream for it yourself? If it is one pre-configured in VDV have you customized any settings on the camera itself?

Thanks,
- ryan

[nimble99]

Hi Ryan,

It's not one from the list, as it is a generic (unbranded) camera, however vlc and QuickTime have no problem with the video stream.
I'm not sure what other information I could give you.
The camera runs a version of Linux.

Thanks

[ryan]

Hi nimble99,

Not knowing the camera or the settings it supports I'm not too sure what to suggest. The only combination of streaming supported is MPEG4 over RTSP? It very well might be that VDV might have some incompatibility with this specific stream, but we've seen various camera settings have large effects on the data being transmitted, so all I can really suggest is playing around with whatever options are exposed in the camera's configuration and seeing if that helps? Anything from reducing the frame rate (VDV actually only needs 10fps anyway) to changing or disabling audio codecs.

I think I recall seeing a problem like this on a camera from a small vendor a few years ago, and we were unable to get the stream to work with VDV, though after loading a different firmware version from the manufacturer on to the camera things were fine. If it is a generic/unbranded camera this is unlikely to be an option for you however.

Sorry I don't have a sure answer for you,
- ryan

[mildrena]

How to upload videos from Sony HDD handycam to computer? I have a Sony HDD Handycam camcorder. I've had it for nearly three years and have never been able to upload the videos to the computer successfully. Sometimes I can get the video but it never has any audio so I can do absolutely nothing with my videos. I was wondering if you think I am doing something wrong or if I need a special software. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
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[Semper Vaporo]

You question is outside of the subject of this thread, so it should have been asked in a new thread... except it also doesn't seem to be concerned with the purpose of this forum, namely, Vitamin D Video, which is a video surveillance/motion detection program and has nothing to do with transfering video from a video recorder to a PC.

But, as for uploading data from a camcorder. Most come with a program for doing this, either on a disk or CD. If you no longer have the stuff that came in the box, you might check the Sony website to see if a program for your specific camera model is available for download from them. There are "Standards" but it seem that not every engineer at every company interprets the "standard" the same way and not all video streams are constructed alike and thus "generic" software sometimes can't handle particular cameras. Vitamin D Video somewhat deliberately does not record audio so it would be of no help in fetching the video AND audio from the camera. Sorry I can't be of more help.

[nimble99]

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the response. Yes, my 'clone' camera does have a firmware update facility - but I also agree I am probably out of luck getting any sort of support from the vendor!
I have made some further investigations, however.
I have compiled OpenRTSP, and FFMPEG for OSX, and pipe the output from OpenRTSP straight in to FFMPEG.
FFMPEG recognises the stream as this:

Stream #0.0: Video: h264, yuv420p, 1600x1200, 10 fps, 10 tbr, 1200k tbn, 20 tbc
[mpegts @ 0x10100c200] muxrate VBR, pcr every 1 pkts, sdt every 200, pat/pmt every 40 pkts

I have piped this stream into an MP4 video file on disk, and it runs for days without getting any artifacts - I havent seen a hiccup yet. Whereas VitaminD starts displaying corrupted video at around 2 days.

I have noticed that if I use the built-in RTSP client in FFMPEG for accessing the RTSP server (instead of using OpenRTSP and piping the output to ffmpeg), FFMPEG does exhibit some similar corruption almost immediately - not exactly the same, but very similar. When using OpenRTSP, the video stream is perfect.
Can you say, what you are using to make the RTSP requests in VitaminD?

Thanks

[doug]

nimble99,

I can confirm that Vitamin D Video is not using OpenRTSP. It uses FFMPEG to fetch the RTSP directly. Sorry!

...one other thing to try: try adding "?tcp" to the end of your stream path. That can tip FFMPEG off try to use TCP instead of UDP to make the connection and sometimes can help make things more reliable...


-Doug

[nimble99]

Ok, thanks Doug I have appended ?tcp to the camera path, I will report back the results in a few days.

Regards

[Jepsh]

Just wanted to report that I got this exact same issue with my cam. A TP-Link TL-SC3430.
I will try to add ?tcp to the stream link when I get home to see if it helps.

Update: Seems like the ?tcp parameter solved my problem with this. Thanks alot! Also, if you got more tips, don't hold back