Get Stream and save as jpeg (image) file from IP Camera using ffmpeg

Question

How i can get stream from Ip Camera, Its using RTP, stream is MPEG4, i have multicast address and port,and i have ip camera's IP address and Port Number.
And I cant reach via http forexample (http://ip/jpeg) And I cant reach stream with VLC Player too. forexample (rtp://ipadressofcam:port) and (rtp://multicastaddress:port)
So What is ffmpeg command of that?
I have windows OS, I only write code with C# right now.
But producer created their own ocx which used for viewing cam,that plugin can work on .net but i dont want to use it becouse it doesnt have much funcionality, I mean you cant get current picture or snapshot of cams, thats why i have to do it myself.

Answer 1

Are you sure the stream is not password-protected?

Try to see why your camera rejects VLC requests. And this is how to do it: Install Wireshark, start it, and put a filter for the camera address, like: ip.addr == camera_ip (xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx). Then, try to connect with VLC, and look there at the messages exchanged. If you see a DROP, UNAUTH, or something that tells you to use a passwd, introduce it. (VLC will first try to connect using an unauthenticated procedure, and if it fails, will ask for a passwd.)

Wireshark will give you clues if the failure reason is something different.

And keep in mind that if VLC can't access it, the chance to find some other way to do it is almost zero. Unless you're a video guru.

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

You can use VLC for such a thing ,and it's ActiveX control which is available for .NET also ,just need to install VLC Media Player and you can set it's control on VS toolbox

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=54969

UPDATE

If you are ready to pay for this stuff you can use http://www.mainconcept.com/products/sdks/video.html this Company product's to advance with Decoding and Encoding ,where you can find a huge Library .

Answer 3

So you want to receive video stream from camera and convert individual frame into JPEG file. This sounds good and actually sounds natural: why not? there is a video feed being sent on network and we don't need much, just to pick individual frame.

The original stream is MPEG-4 (Part 2) and desired target encoding is JPEG. This breaks the task into parts of getting MPEG-4 video feed, decoding it into uncompressed images, and encoding into JPEG. Let us go through these from the last one backwards.

JPEG is a popular encoding and there are various codecs with different interface capable of compressing into JPEG. Options include GDI+ API, IJG JPEG library libjpeg, JPEG libraries and codecs for video with DirectShow and other interfaces.

MPEG-4 decoder is a complicated component, however is luckily well standardized and available in different interfaces and from several sources. In particular MPEG-4 Part 2 Video Decoder is shipped as DMO (and also through ) with Windows 7. Decoder is also available as DirectShow filter in ffdshow, Intel Media SDK.

Back to the first step, you need to reach MPEG-4 stream from network. First of all you indicated that the camera is available on multi-cast UDP address. This makes you open a socket and put into onto multi-cast group in order to start receiving RTP data. The data you would receive is not pure MPEG-4 yet, and is formatted according to RTP Payload Format for MPEG-4 Audio/Visual Streams and as you receive RTP stream of messages you will have to be prepared to receive out of order fragments, packet losses etc. You are supposed to receive what you can receive, check the RTP headers, and do your best in reconstructing MPEG-4 feed.

Eventually you need to cover these steps (not necessarily directly, you would rather use third party libraries including those mentioned in other answers) from your application and build a pipeline which stitches together receiving from network and transcoding.

Answer 4

So until now, I saw VLC cant open it but if we create .sdp file and play it with ffplay only a black screen appears.

vlc -vvv dshow:// --sout-keep --sout-all --sout=#rtp{dst=multicastaddress,port=portNo,sdp=file:///C:/test/my.sdp}

Of course this is not pure solution but there is little bit hope.

But obsolute solution can be like that;
There is no way to use just c# to achive what i intend. There are few c++ library components that i can use, but i can use it along with Managed c++ to write interop services and use those dlls in my c# code.Here is what i need:

1-I need an RTP Library, http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~jori/page/index.php?n=CS.Jrtplib or live555 but live555 has certain limitations.
2-RTP Library is the transport for the MPEG4 stream i pull from my encoder. But i need ways to control the stream, those are provided producer's WSDLs.
3-After that i need a decoder; Libavcodec, I can use libavcodec to convert an Iframe to a jpeg image in .net.