Motion JPEG

This module can provide and receive streams in MJPEG format.
This module is also responsible for receiving snapshots in JPEG format.
This module also supports streaming to the server console (terminal) in the animated ASCII art format.

MJPEG Client

Important. For a stream in MJPEG format, your source MUST contain the MJPEG codec. If your stream has the MJPEG codec, you can receive an MJPEG stream or JPEG snapshots via the API.

You can receive an MJPEG stream in several ways:

some cameras support MJPEG codec inside RTSP stream (ex. second stream for Dahua cameras)
some cameras have an HTTP link with MJPEG stream
some cameras have an HTTP link with snapshots - go2rtc can convert them to MJPEG stream
you can convert an H264/H265 stream from your camera via FFmpeg integration

With this example, your stream will have both H264 and MJPEG codecs:

yaml

streams:
  camera1:
    - rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]/av_stream/ch0
    - ffmpeg:camera1#video=mjpeg

MJPEG Server

mpjpeg

Output a stream in MJPEG format. In FFmpeg, this format is called mpjpeg because it contains HTTP headers.

ffplay http://192.168.1.123:1984/api/stream.mjpeg?src=camera1

jpeg

Receiving a JPEG snapshot.

curl http://192.168.1.123:1984/api/frame.jpeg?src=camera1

You can use width/w and/or height/h parameters.
You can use rotate param with 90, 180, 270 or -90 values.
You can use hardware/hw param read more.
You can use cache param (1m, 10s, etc.) to get a cached snapshot.
- The snapshot is cached only when requested with the cache parameter.
- A cached snapshot will be used if its time is not older than the time specified in the cache parameter.
- The cache parameter does not check the image dimensions from the cache and those specified in the query.

ascii

Stream as ASCII to Terminal. This format is just for fun. You can boast to your friends that you can stream cameras even to the server console without a GUI.

The demo video features a combination of several settings for this format with added audio. Of course, the format doesn't support audio out of the box.

Tips

this feature works only with MJPEG codec (use transcoding)
choose a low frame rate (FPS)
choose the width and height to fit in your terminal
different terminals support different numbers of colors (8, 256, rgb)
URL-encode the text parameter
you can stream any camera or file from disk

go2rtc.yaml - transcoding to MJPEG, terminal size - 210x59 (16/9), fps - 10

yaml

streams:
  gamazda: ffmpeg:gamazda.mp4#video=mjpeg#hardware#width=210#height=59#raw=-r 10

API params

color - foreground color, values: empty, 8, 256, rgb, SGR
- example: 30 (black), 37 (white), 38;5;226 (yellow)
back - background color, values: empty, 8, 256, rgb, SGR
- example: 40 (black), 47 (white), 48;5;226 (yellow)
text - character set, values: empty, one character, block, list of chars (in order of brightness)
- example: %20 (space), block (keyword for block elements), ox (two chars)

Examples

bash

% curl "http://192.168.1.123:1984/api/stream.ascii?src=gamazda"
% curl "http://192.168.1.123:1984/api/stream.ascii?src=gamazda&color=256"
% curl "http://192.168.1.123:1984/api/stream.ascii?src=gamazda&back=256&text=%20"
% curl "http://192.168.1.123:1984/api/stream.ascii?src=gamazda&back=8&text=%20%20"
% curl "http://192.168.1.123:1984/api/stream.ascii?src=gamazda&text=helloworld"

yuv4mpegpipe

Raw YUV frame stream with YUV4MPEG header.

ffplay http://192.168.1.123:1984/api/stream.y4m?src=camera1

Streaming ingest

shell

ffmpeg -re -i BigBuckBunny.mp4 -c mjpeg -f mpjpeg http://localhost:1984/api/stream.mjpeg?dst=camera1