RtspServer

A lightweight RTSP server and pusher library written in C++11.

This repository is maintained by the ZoneMinder project and is the RTSP server used by ZoneMinder's zms/monitor streaming. It originated as a fork of PHZ76/RtspServer; the original project has been inactive since 2023, so this repository is now developed independently. Many thanks to PHZ76 for the original implementation.

Features

• Linux, Windows, and macOS platforms
• Video: H.264, H.265, VP8, AV1 (including a passthrough mode for pre-formed RTP payloads)
• Audio: AAC, G.711 A-law, G.711 µ-law
• Simultaneous audio and video in one session
• Unicast (RTP over UDP, RTP over RTSP/TCP interleaved) and multicast
• RTSP push/publish over TCP
• Digest authentication
• Connection keep-alive/heartbeat detection (unicast)
• sprop-parameter-sets in H.264/H.265 SDP for faster stream start-up

Requirements

• A C++11 compiler (gcc 4.8+/clang or Visual Studio 2015+)
• CMake 3.10 or later

Examples

• rtsp_server.cpp — serve a live stream
• rtsp_h264_file.cpp — serve an H.264 elementary stream from a file
• rtsp_pusher.cpp — push a stream to another RTSP server

Architecture

FAQ

• How do I stream a media file (mp4, mkv, ...)? This library does not parse container formats. Use FFmpeg (or similar) to demux/read frames and feed them to a MediaSession. rtsp_h264_file.cpp shows the pattern for a raw H.264 stream.
• The RTSP client connects but receives no data. Capture the session with Wireshark and inspect the RTP packets; also double-check byte order (endianness) when packing frames on unusual platforms.

Acknowledgements

• PHZ76, author of the original RtspServer
• MD5 implementation from websocketpp
• All contributors

License

MIT License

Support

Please open an issue in this repository. For ZoneMinder-specific questions, use the ZoneMinder forums or the main ZoneMinder repository.