ROS Service to store RTSP streams (ros_service_store_rtsp)

This is a Python ROS service to save RTSP stream to a file 'the easy way' without dealing with a lot of ffmpeg headaches.

Installation

Dillinger requires Ubuntu 16.04, ffmpeg, numpy, ffmpeg-python and cv_bridge to run.

Install the dependencies (the easy way!):

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$ git clone https://github.com/h3ct0r/ros_service_store_rtsp
$ cd ~/catkin_ws
$ echo "yaml file://$(readlink -f src/ros_service_store_rtsp/deps/custom_rosdep_rules.yaml)" | sudo tee -a /etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/20-default.list
$ rosdep update
$ sudo rosdep install --from-paths src/ros_service_store_rtsp --ignore-src -r -y

Finally install the latest version of ffmpeg (4.1 for Ubuntu 16.04 using the PPA). This is optinal, but recommended.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/ffmpeg-4 -y
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install ffmpeg -y

How to run

Launch

Launch the main launch file:

$ roslaunch ros_service_store_rtsp store_rtsp_service.launch

And the service will show up:

rosservice list will show the /store_rtsp service.

Input

The service is called with a StoreRTSPRequest message type, that is basically a boolean ("start or stop" recording) and a string (The camera URI such as the RSTP address or a file such as /dev/video0).

#!/usr/bin/env python
from ros_service_store_rtsp.srv import StoreRTSP

def callStoreService(status, link):
    rospy.wait_for_service('/store_rtsp')
    try:
        store_request = rospy.ServiceProxy('/store_rtsp', StoreRTSP)
        print store_request(status, link)

    except rospy.ServiceException, e:
        print "Service call failed: %s"%e

callStoreService(True, "rtsp://stream.com/live/live.sdp")

$ rosservice call /store_rtsp true "/dev/video0" # to start recording
$ rosservice call /store_rtsp false "/dev/video0" # to stop recording

Output

The output is a StoreRTSPResponse object with the following data:

bool success : if the request/response was a success or not
string filename : the filepath of the video file being processed
string msg : a status message of the request
uint16 duration_secs : the duration of the video calculated by ffmpeg
uint16 wallclock_secs : the wallclock seconds between the video recording and stopping the recording

Configuring the launch file:

A tipical launch file look like this:

<launch>
    <arg name="group_name" default="store_video" />
    <group ns="$(arg group_name)">
        <node pkg="ros_service_store_rtsp" type="store_rtsp_service.py" name="store_rtsp_service" output="screen">
            <param name="base_output_path" value="$(find ros_service_store_rtsp)/stored_streams" />
            <param name="extension" value=".mkv" />
            <param name="acodec" value="" /> <!-- leave empty or do not set this param to disable audio -->
            <param name="vcodec" value="copy" />
            <param name="fps" value="15" />
            <param name="video_bitrate" value="900k" />
            <param name="publish_screenshots" value="true"/>
            <param name="publish_screenshots_rate" value="1"/>
            <param name="segment_time" value="300"/>
            <param name="segment_format" value="matroska"/>
        </node>
    </group>
</launch>

Where:

base_output_path: is the base directory to store the videos (/tmp is the default)
extension: the extension of the filename (mkv is the default)
acodec: audio codec
vcodec: video codec
fps: frame per second stored at the output video (15 fps is the default)
video_bitrate: the quality of the video beign stored, 900k is the default.
publish screenshots: a boolean to publish a screenshot of the video beign processed (usefull to check if the video is beign stored withoput problems). The default is True.
publish_screenshots_rate: rate at which the images are published
segment_time: size of a video segment
segment format: video format of the segment (default to matroska)

Merge multiple video files

The resulting segments can be stitched by first creating a text file seg.txt like this

file 'encoded_testfile_piece_00.mp4'
file 'encoded_testfile_piece_01.mp4'
file 'encoded_testfile_piece_02.mp4'
file 'encoded_testfile_piece_03.mp4'

And then running

ffmpeg -f concat -i seg.txt -c copy -fflags +genpts encoded_full.mp4

More info at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7333232/how-to-concatenate-two-mp4-files-using-ffmpeg

Development

Want to contribute? Great! Send me a pull request with your changes!

Testing

Execute this command to run the tests:

$ rostest ros_service_store_rtsp test_stream.test

Example ffmpeg command executed:

ffmpeg -rtsp_transport tcp -stimeout 3000000 -i rtsp://user:pass@192.168.1.2:554/stream0 -f segment -b:v 900k -an -flags +global_header -map 0 -map_metadata -1 -movflags +frag_keyframe+separate_moof+omit_tfhd_offset+empty_moov -reset_timestamps 1 -segment_format matroska -segment_time 300 -strict 2 -vcodec copy /tmp/1.stream.mkv -y

Todos

Write MORE Tests
- Test function to calculate video duration for all segments
- Service entry to get the number of segments and duration so far
Check if the ffmpeg subprocess has died and restart it for every stream
test with more cameras

License

MIT

Free Software, Hell Yeah!

h3ct0r / ros_service_store_rtsp