Nginx RTMP didn't accept HEVC h265 input format

Question

I'm trying to created live event broadcast on my VPS server , to make the audience able watch my broadcast I use Nginx RTMP that's produce link at this format http://192.168.1.5:8080/hls/live.m3u8 this is my ffmpeg command

ffmpeg -re -i <input> -s 634x360 -vb 110k -c:v libx265 -preset ultrafast -c:a aac -ab 38k -ar 44100 -f mpegts rtmp://localhost/hls/live

command output

frame= 1465 fps= 25 q=-0.0 size= 1231kB time=00:00:58.56 bitrate= 172.2kbits/s speed=0.999x

Nginx config file

server {
listen      8080;
server_name  localhost;
 location /hls 
   {
     types 
       {
                application/dash+xml mpd;
                application/vnd.apple.mpegurl m3u8;
       }
      root /tmp;
      add_header Cache-Control no-cache;
    }
  }

so the encoding runs on mealtime but when I try to access live.m3u8 url I got nginx 404 Not Found error message like Nginx didn't generate .m3u file at all .

==update

Alright I found workaround solution to generate .m3u8 file directly from ffmpeg using this command

  ffmpeg -i <input> -map 0 -c:v libx265 -vb 300k -c:a aac -ab 38k -ar 44100 -preset veryfast -f ssegment -segment_list /var/www/vhl/live.m3u8 -segment_list_type hls -segment_list_size 10 -segment_list_flags +live -segment_time 10 -segment_wrap 30 /var/www/vhl/live%01d.ts 

I was able to play it via VLC for which is good for now to gain more performance e.g you have huge number of audience mount your output folder /var/www/vhl/ as tmpfs

Answer 1

Update, as of March 2023, RTMP has added support for HEVC. Refer to Enhanced RTMP. Therefore, both RTMP and FLV standards now support HEVC.

Support status for related open-source projects:

• OBS 29 supports RTMP HEVC. Refer to Enable AV1, HEVC via RTMP to YouTube.
• FFmpeg's patch for Enhanced RTMP support has been submitted and is under review.
• mpegts.js 1.7.3 supports HTTP-FLV HEVC. Refer to FLV with HEVC support.
• SRS media server 6.0 supports RTMP HTTP-FLV HEVC. Refer to H265: Support HEVC in RTMP/SRT/HLS/WebRTC/DASH/GB28181.

To test RTMP HEVC, you can use OBS, patched FFmpeg, and SRS. First, start SRS:

docker run --rm -it -p 1935:1935 -p 8080:8080 ossrs/srs:6 \
  ./objs/srs -c conf/hevc.flv.conf

Download OBS 29+ from here, select the HEVC codec, or use FFmpeg 6.0 to publish RTMP HEVC stream:

ffmpeg -stream_loop -1 -re -i doc/source.flv -acodec copy -vcodec libx265 \
  -f flv rtmp://localhost/live/livestream

Note: Build or patch FFmpeg 4/5/6+ with HEVC over RTMP, please see this post.

Now, you are able to play HTTP-FLV or HLS with HEVC codec:

• HTTP-FLV(by H5): http://localhost:8080/live/livestream.flv
• HLS(by VLC or fflay): http://localhost:8080/live/livestream.m3u8

Keep in mind that FFmpeg 6.0 does not support HEVC over RTMP until the following commit 637c761b:

commit 637c761be1bf9c3e1f0f347c5c3a390d7c32b282
Author: Steven Liu <[email protected]>
Date:   Mon Aug 28 09:59:24 2023 +0800

    avformat/rtmpproto: support enhanced rtmp
    
    add option named rtmp_enhanced_codec,
    it would support hvc1,av01,vp09 now,
    the fourcc is using Array of strings.
    
    Signed-off-by: Steven Liu <[email protected]>

For details, please refer to SRS HEVC Usage.