node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy

Simple proxy for leveraging ffmpeg to convert any source URL into MPEG-TS and serve it on demand over HTTP. It has been designed for proxying HLS streams for use as IPTV input in tvheadend, but it can be used with any source that can be handled by the avconv utility. Currently it simply remuxes the source stream into MPEG-TS and adds a service name (for automatic detection in tvheadend), no transcoding is performed.

Since HLS input can be a bit unreliable, the converter process will be restarted automatically (without the HTTP response ending) until the client closes the connection (in which case the process is killed).

Requirements

• nodejs >= 0.12
• avconv or ffmpeg

Usage

• Install the required libraries by running npm install in the project directory. You will have to run this command again if you update to a newer version.
• Copy examples/sources.json someplace and modify it
• Run the program using nodejs node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.js

Usage: nodejs ./node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.js -p <port> [-a <avconv>] [-q | -v] [-s <sources>]

Options:
  -p, --port     The port the HTTP server should be listening on            [required]
  -l, --listen   The address to listen on                                   [default: "::"]
  -a, --avconv   The path to avconv, defaults to just "avconv"              [default: "avconv"]
  -s, --sources  The path to sources.json                                   [required]
  -q, --quiet    Disable all logging to stdout
  -v, --verbose  Enable verbose logging (shows the output from avconv)

Once the proxy is running, streams are available on the e.g. http://localhost:9128/channel1, assuming port 9128 is used and a source with the URL /channel1 exists.

Configuring sources

Sources are read from the file specified when starting the program (use examples/sources.json as a starting point). The file contains an array of JSON objects with the following definition:

• name: the service name
• provider: the name of the service provider
• url: the relative URL the stream will be available on when served
• source: the source URL
• avconvOptions: (optional) special avconv parameters for this source. This is an object containing two arrays, inputand output.
• prescript: (optional) script to run before transcoding starts. Useful if you need to bring up temporary VPN interfaces etc. Four arguments are passed to the script; the source URL, the relative stream URL, the provider name and the channel name.
• postscript: (optional) same as prescript except it's run when streaming is stopped.
• http_proxy: (optional) the HTTP proxy to use for the source (e.g. http://proxy.example.com:8080)
• avconv: (optional) source-specific override of the avconv binary to use. This can be useful if you for some reason need to use a special version off ffmpeg just to play a specific source.

The program listens to changes made to the source file and reloads it automatically whenever it is changed. The main idea behind this is to support source URLs that contain parameter that change frequently and need to be adapted for (e.g. session IDs). If the changes you make result in the file being unreadable (malformed JSON) it will complain about that and continue using the previous source definitions (if any). Below is an excerpt from the example source file.

[
        {
                "name": "Channel One",
                "provider": "Provider One",
                "url": "/channel1",
                "source": "http://iptv.example.com/channel1.m3u8"
        },
        ...
]

Custom avconv parameters

If your sources require additional parameters to work correctly (most commonly because the source uses MP4 as container) you can append to the default ones by using the avconvOptions source parameter. Here is a complete example:

[
        {
                "name": "Channel One",
                "provider": "Provider One",
                "url": "/channel1",
                "source": "rtmp://example.com:1935/live playpath=test live=1 pageUrl=http://example.com/foo token=bar timeout=10",
                "avconvOptions": {
                        "input": [
                                "fflags", "+genpts"
                        ],
                        "output": [
                                "-bsf", "h264_mp4toannexb"
                        ]
                }
        }
]

In the example above, the options fflags +genpts will be injected before the input source is specified (which means those options apply to the input, and -bsf h264_mp4toannexb will be injected before the output destination is specified (which means those options apply to the output).

If you only need to specify output parameters you can omit the input key completely.

Commonly needed parameters

In most cases you don't need any extra parameters, although one often needed one is the -bsf h264_mp4toannexb output option (as in the example above). If you enable silly debugging mode (-v) and get an H.264 bitstream malformed, no startcode found, use the h264_mp4toannexb bitstream filter (-bsf h264_mp4toannexb) error message, this is what you need.

Running as a service

You can turn the proxy into a proper daemon that can be started and stopped like other services. Start by placing your source definitions in /etc/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy/sources.json, then follow the instructions below for your startup system.

Systemd (Ubuntu >= 16.04, Debian >= Jessie)

• Copy support/systemd/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.service to /lib/systemd/system and modify it if necessary (e.g. to change the parameters passed to it or the user it should run as)
• Run sudo systemctl enable node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.service to enable the service
• Run sudo systemctl start node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.service to start the service

If you make any changes to /lib/systemd/system/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.service after you've enabled the service you will have to run sudo systemctl daemon-reload for the changes to take effect.

The output from the application is logged to /var/log/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.log

Upstart (Ubuntu 14.04)

• Copy support/upstart/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.conf to /etc/init/ and modify it if necessary (e.g. to change the parameters passed to it or the user it should run as)
• Run sudo service node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy start

The output from the application is logged to /var/log/upstart/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.log

SysVinit (Debian Wheezy)

• Copy sysvinit/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy to /etc/init.d, modify it if necessary (e.g. to change the parameters passed to it or the user it should run as)
• Run sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy
• Run sudo update-rc.d node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy defaults to enable the service on startup
• Run sudo /etc/init.d/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy start to start the service

The output from the application is logged to /var/log/node-ffmpeg-mpegts-proxy.log

Development environment

Install nodejs and ffmpeg locally, no virtual machines required.

In order to easily test the startup/service scripts there is a Vagrantfile which starts three separate virtual machines, one for each supported init system.