Capturing RTSP stream using javacv on Android

[Ashish Nangia]

The aim is to capture RTSP streams (H.264 encoding - framerate 30, ) from IPCAM and display on ImageView in my Android Application.

Specs of video stream

Encoding: H.264 (IP camera also supports MPEG-4). At this stage I do not care but H.264 would be preferred.

Frame rate: 30

Frame size: 384x216

I have done the following so far:

1. Created a new project in Eclipse.

2. Followed instructions from JAVACV readme.txt

• Downloaded javacv-0.6-bin.zip
• Downloaded javacv-0.6-cppjars.zip
• Copied 'javacpp.jar' and 'javacv.jar' to libs folder
• Extract all the `*.so` files from `javacv-android-arm.jar`, `opencv-2.4.6.1-android-arm.jar`, and `ffmpeg-2.0.1-android-arm.jar` directly into the newly created "libs/armeabi" folder, without creating any of the subdirectories found in the JAR files.
• Navigate to Project > Properties > Java Build Path > Libraries and click "Add JARs...".
• Select both `javacpp.jar` and `javacv.jar` from the newly created "libs" folder.

3. Verified that the RTSP stream from my IP Camera is working correctly. I used VLC on Win7 to play the RTSP stream. I also used an Android application called 'IP Cam Viewer Basic v4.8.7.apk' and it was able to play the RTSP stream.
4. Wrote a very simple Android application as follow:

                try

                {

                    //OpenCVFrameGrabber grabber = new OpenCVFrameGrabber("rtsp://192.168.8.122:554/live2.sdp");

                    FrameGrabber grabber = new FFmpegFrameGrabber("rtsp://192.168.8.122:554/live2.sdp");

                    grabber.setFormat("rtp");

                    grabber.setFrameRate(30);

                    grabber.start();

                    IplImage frame = grabber.grab();

                    while (/*canvasFrame.isVisible() &&*/ (frame = grabber.grab()) != null)

                    {

                        //canvasFrame.showImage(frame);

                    }

                    grabber.stop();

                    //canvasFrame.dispose();

                }

                catch(Exception e)

                {

                    Log.e(LOGTAG, "Exception MyRunnable: " + e.getMessage());

                }

Initially I was using FFmpegFrameGrabber but logcat reported that

Exception MyRunnable: avformat_open_input() error -1330794744: Could not open input "rtsp://192.168.8.122:554/live2.sdp". (Has setFormat() been called?)

I have tried using the following with no luck.

grabber.setFormat("rtsp");

grabber.setFormat("rtp");

grabber.setFormat("h264");

After some googling I came across the following link which indicated to use OpenCVFrameGrabber, but still no luck.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/javacv/2YASqKlm1WU

If I use OpenCVFrameGrabber then I get the following Exception in logcat:

Exception MyRunnable: cvCreateFileCapture() Error: Could not create camera capture.

Can someone please advice on what I can do in order to get RTSP packets captured?

Final step (once I get the above working) would be to convert Ipllmage to Bitmap.

Many thanks.

[Samuel Audet]

On 11/08/2013 08:07 AM, Ashish Nangia wrote:
> Can someone please advice on *what I can do in order* to get RTSP packets captured?

> Final step (once I get the above working) would be to convert Ipllmage to Bitmap.

If your RTSP stream uses TCP, it seems like we need to set the
rtsp_transport format option accordingly:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/StreamingGuide
This interface isn't exposed by FFmpegFrameGrabber, but I'm guessing
that calling
av_dict_set(options, "rtsp_transport", "tcp", 0);
just before the call to `avformat_open_input()` should to the trick.

Please post any patch to FFmpegFrameGrabber that you create as a new
"issue" here to let other users benefit.
http://code.google.com/p/javacv/issues/
Thanks!

Samuel