Embed video from USB webcam into web page using ffserver and ffmpeg - http

Question

I need to stream images from a USB webcam to a webpage on my embedded system. The operating system used is Linux.
I successfully installed ffserver and ffmpeg, and also mplayer.
This is my /etc/ffserver.conf (it's not definitive, I am just testing it):
# Port on which the server is listening. You must select a different
# port from your standard HTTP web server if it is running on the same
# computer.
Port 8090
# Address on which the server is bound. Only useful if you have
# several network interfaces.
BindAddress 0.0.0.0
# Number of simultaneous HTTP connections that can be handled. It has
# to be defined *before* the MaxClients parameter, since it defines the
# MaxClients maximum limit.
MaxHTTPConnections 2
# Number of simultaneous requests that can be handled. Since FFServer
# is very fast, it is more likely that you will want to leave this high
# and use MaxBandwidth, below.
MaxClients 2
# This the maximum amount of kbit/sec that you are prepared to
# consume when streaming to clients.
MaxBandwidth 1000
# Access log file (uses standard Apache log file format)
# '-' is the standard output.
CustomLog -
# Suppress that if you want to launch ffserver as a daemon.
NoDaemon
<Feed feed1.ffm>
File /tmp/feed1.ffm #when remarked, no file is beeing created and the stream keeps working!!
FileMaxSize 200K
# Only allow connections from localhost to the feed.
ACL allow 127.0.0.1
# the output stream format - SWF = flash
Format swf
# this must match the ffmpeg -r argument
VideoFrameRate 5
# another quality tweak
VideoBitRate 320
# quality ranges - 1-31 (1 = best, 31 = worst)
VideoQMin 1
VideoQMax 3
VideoSize 640x480
# wecams don't have audio
NoAudio
</Stream>
# FLV output - good for streaming
<Stream test.flv>
# the source feed
Feed feed1.ffm
# the output stream format - FLV = FLash Video
Format flv
VideoCodec flv
# this must match the ffmpeg -r argument
VideoFrameRate 5
# another quality tweak
VideoBitRate 320
# quality ranges - 1-31 (1 = best, 31 = worst)
VideoQMin 1
VideoQMax 3
VideoSize 640x480
# wecams don't have audio
NoAudio
</Stream>
<Stream stat.html>
Format status
</Stream>
<Redirect index.html>
# credits!
URL http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/
</Redirect>
From the shell I can execute:
# ffserver -f /etc/ffserver.conf
and
# ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 320x240 -r 5 -i /dev/video0 http://127.0.0.1:8090/test.flv
No errors are reported during the execution. Sounds good but maybe it's not OK at all.
Then, in the webpage, I wrote this simple code:
<video controls>
<source src="http://127.0.0.1:8090/test.flv">
</video>
I read on another thread here on stack overflow (I lost the link) that this code should be enough.. But it's not working for me.
But I can see the file /tmp/feed1.ffm has been created, so I think I can use this stream to show the camera images on my webpage. Am I right ?
What it the simplest solution ?
Thank you.
EDIT
I allowed the connections into the ffserver's configuration file:
<Feed feed1.ffm>
File /tmp/feed1.ffm #when remarked, no file is beeing created and the stream keeps working!!
FileMaxSize 200K
ACL allow 127.0.0.1
ACL allow localhost
ACL allow 192.168.2.2 192.168.2.10
</Feed>
But still does not work.

Answer 1

ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 320x240 -r 5 -i /dev/video0
http://127.0.0.1:8090/test.flv
As described in the documentation, you should stream to the feed1.ffm file, not to the test.flv file. ffmpeg -> ffserver communication is the ffm file, and ffserver -> webbrowser communication is the .flv file.

Answer 2

I think HTML doesn't like the pseudo files like pipes or .ffm :)
Maybe you could use the <embed>tag from HTML5.
<embed type="video/flv" src="http://127.0.0.1:8090/test.flv" width="320" height="240">
Or however you want to set the size.