nginx-http-flv-module

Media streaming server based on nginx-rtmp-module.

Features

• All features nginx-rtmp-module provides.

• Other features provided by nginx-http-flv-module vs nginx-rtmp-module:

Features	nginx-http-flv-module	nginx-rtmp-module	remarks
HTTP-FLV (subscribe)	√	x	HTTPS-FLV and chunked response supported
GOP cache	√	x	Only for H.264 video and AAC audio
VHOST	√	x
omit listen directive	√	x
JSON style stat	√	x

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

Note

nginx-http-flv-module has all features that nginx-rtmp-module provides, so DON'T compile nginx-http-flv-module along with nginx-rtmp-module.

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

or

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

For simplicity, transcoding is not used (so -vcodec copy -acodec copy is used):

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

via HTTP-FLV

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

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.

via RTMP

rtmp://example.com[:port]/appname/streamname

via HLS

http://example.com[:port]/dir/streamname.m3u8

via DASH

http://example.com[:port]/dir/streamname.mpd

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.

The directive worker_processes of value 1 is preferable to other values, because ngx_rtmp_stat_module can only get the statistics of one process at a time in multi-processes mode. If the statistics is unimportant, it can be set as number greater than 1, it is better to set it as the number of CPU cores.

worker_processes  4; #should be 1 for Windows, for it doesn't support Unix domain socket
#worker_processes  auto; #from versions 1.3.8 and 1.2.5

worker_cpu_affinity  0001 0010 0100 1000; #only available on FreeBSD and Linux
#worker_cpu_affinity  auto; #from version 1.9.10

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 /hls {
            types {
                application/vnd.apple.mpegurl m3u8;
                video/mp2t ts;
            }

            root /tmp;
            add_header 'Cache-Control' 'no-cache';
        }

        location /dash {
            root /tmp;
            add_header 'Cache-Control' 'no-cache';
        }

        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
        }

        #if JSON style stat needed, no need to specify
        #stat.xsl but a new directive rtmp_stat_format

        #location /stat {
        #    rtmp_stat all;
        #    rtmp_stat_format json;
        #}

        location /control {
            rtmp_control all; #configuration of control module of rtmp
        }
    }
}

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 reducing the wating time for the first picture of video
        }

        application hls {
            live on;
            hls on;
            hls_path /tmp/hls;
        }

        application dash {
            live on;
            dash on;
            dash_path /tmp/dash;
        }
    }

    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 reducing the wating time for the first picture of video
        }
    }

    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 reducing the wating time for the first picture of video
        }
    }
}