nginx-http-flv-module

Media streaming server based on nginx-rtmp-module.

Features

• All features nginx-rtmp-module supplies.

• HTTP-based FLV live streaming (subscribe).

• GOP cache for low latency (H.264 video and AAC audio).

• Transfer-Encoding: chunked HTTP response supported.

• Missing listen directive in rtmp server block will be OK.

• Virtual hosts supported.

Systems supported

• Linux (recommended)/FreeBSD/MacOS/Windows (limited).

Players supported

• VLC (RTMP & HTTP-FLV)/OBS (RTMP & HTTP-FLV)/JW Player (RTMP)/flv.js (HTTP-FLV).

Prerequisites

• GNU make for activating compiler on Unix-like systems to compile software.

• GCC for compiling on Unix-like systems/MSVC for compiling on Windows.

• GDB for debuging on Unix-like systems.

• FFmpeg for publishing media streams.

• VLC player (recommended) for playing media streams.

• PCRE for NGINX if regular expressions needed.

• OpenSSL for NGINX if encrypted access needed.

• zlib for NGINX if compression needed.

Build

On Windows

Build steps please refer to Building nginx on the Win32 platform with Visual C, and don't forget to add --add-module=/path/to/nginx-http-flv-module in Run configure script step.

On Unix-like systems

Download NGINX and nginx-http-flv-module.

Uncompress them.

cd to NGINX source directory & run this:

Compile the module into NGINX

./configure --add-module=/path/to/nginx-http-flv-module
make
make install

Compile the module as a dynamic module

./configure --add-dynamic-module=/path/to/nginx-http-flv-module
make
make install

Note

If the module is compiled as a dynamic module, the NGINX version MUST be equal to or greater than 1.9.11.

Usage

For details about usages of nginx-rtmp-module, please refer to README.md.

Publish

ffmpeg -re -i example.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -f flv rtmp://example.com[:port]/appname/streamname

The appname is used to match an application block in rtmp block (see below for details).

The streamname can be specified at will.

The default port for RTMP is 1935, if some other ports were used, :port must be specified.

Play (HTTP)

http://example.com[:port]/dir?[port=xxx&]app=myapp&stream=mystream

The dir is used to match location blocks in http block (see below for details).

The default port for HTTP is 80, if some other ports were used, :port must be specified.

The default port for RTMP is 1935, if some other ports were used, port=xxx must be specified.

The app is used to match an application block, but if the requested app appears in several server blocks and those blocks have the same address and port configuration, host name matches server_name directive will be additionally used to identify the requested application block, otherwise the first one is matched.

The stream is used to match the publishing streamname.

Example

Assuming that listen directive specified in http block is:

http {
    ...
    server {
        listen 8080; #not default port 80
        ...

        location /live {
            flv_live on;
        }
    }
}

And listen directive specified in rtmp block is:

rtmp {
    ...
    server {
        listen 1985; #not default port 1935
        ...

        application myapp {
            live on;
        }
    }
}

Then the url of play based on HTTP is:

http://example.com:8080/live?port=1985&app=myapp&stream=mystream

Note

HTTP-FLV live response was rewritten for some reasons, for example, somebody asked that if nginx-http-flv-module supported CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing). Previous versions of HTTP-FLV response of nginx-http-flv-module was hard coded, it meant that some customized HTTP headers can not be added via config file, such as Access-Control-Allow-Origin. In addition, some directives supplied by HTTP modules of NGINX would not function because of hard coded codes, so the feature was rewritten.

chunked directive is deprecated now, the feature supplied by it is replaced by standard NGINX directive chunked_transfer_encoding. Note that the directive chunked_transfer_encoding is open by default for HTTP version 1.1 (HTTP/1.1).

Since some players don't support HTTP chunked transmission, it's better to specify chunked_transfer_encoding off; in location where flv_live on; is specified in this case, or play will fail.

Example nginx.conf

Note

The directives rtmp_auto_push, rtmp_auto_push_reconnect and rtmp_socket_dir will not function on Windows except on Windows 10 17063 and later versions, because relay in multiple processes mode needs help of Unix domain socket, please refer to Unix domain socket on Windows 10 for details.

worker_processes  4; #should be 1 for Windows, for it doesn't support Unix domain socket
worker_cpu_affinity  0001 0010 0100 1000; #should be eliminated for Windows

error_log logs/error.log error;

#if the module is compiled as a dynamic module and features relevant
#to RTMP are needed, the command below MUST be specified and MUST be
#located before events directive, otherwise the module won't be loaded
#or will be loaded unsuccessfully when NGINX is started
#load_module modules/ngx_rtmp_module.so;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    keepalive_timeout  65;

    server {
        listen       80;

        location / {
            root   /var/www;
            index  index.html index.htm;
        }

        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   html;
        }

        location /live {
            flv_live on; #open flv live streaming (subscribe)
            chunked_transfer_encoding  on; #open 'Transfer-Encoding: chunked' response

            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*'; #add additional HTTP header
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true'; #add additional HTTP header
        }

        location /stat {
            #configuration of push & pull status

            rtmp_stat all;
            rtmp_stat_stylesheet stat.xsl;
        }

        location /stat.xsl {
            root /var/www/rtmp; #specify in where stat.xsl located
        }
    }
}

rtmp_auto_push on;
rtmp_auto_push_reconnect 1s;
rtmp_socket_dir /tmp;

rtmp {
    out_queue   4096;
    out_cork    8;
    max_streams 64;

    server {
        listen 1935;
        server_name www.test.*; #for suffix wildcard matching of virtual host name

        application myapp {
            live on;
            gop_cache on; #open GOP cache for low latency
        }
    }

    server {
        listen 1935;
        server_name *.test.com; #for prefix wildcard matching of virtual host name

        application myapp {
            live on;
            gop_cache on; #open GOP cache for low latency
        }
    }

    server {
        listen 1935;
        server_name www.test.com; #for completely matching of virtual host name

        application myapp {
            live on;
            gop_cache on; #open GOP cache for low latency
        }
    }
}