RTSP support

[serhiynovos]

It would be nice to have support for RTSP protocol which will allow to integrate bunch of different IP cameras into LiveKit room.

[davidzhao]

I think the tricky part here is RTSP is

• usually available as a server (where we would need to pull)
• typically behind private networks
  This would make it difficult for Ingress to fetch that resource.

It'd be more practical to achieve this by building this into the CLI, where it could run locally and fetch a resource, then publishing to livekit-server directly

[serhiynovos]

In case of self hosted LiveKit it cannot be a problem I think. Or even if LiveKit is deployed somewhere in the cloud here is still possibility to deploy ingress locally where server and ingress will connect to single redis server (Which can be secured by having VPN network). In case of cli it will not allow to automate rtsp streams publishing as ingress API does

[mpisat]

are we talking about pulling like SRT/HTTP or ingesting like RTMP/WHIP?

[serhiynovos]

are we talking about pulling like SRT/HTTP or ingesting like RTMP/WHIP?

Pulling

[pabloFuente]

We have forked the livekit/ingress project precisely to support RTSP pulling: https://github.com/OpenVidu/ingress
The API is the same as for creating Ingresses of type IngressInput.URL_INPUT. Simply set an url of protocol rtsp:// or rtsps://. Here there are code snippets for all LiveKit backend SDKs: https://openvidu.io/latest/docs/developing-your-openvidu-app/how-to/#ip-cameras

The fork is up to date and it just adds this functionality. I wish it would be as simple as replacing the Docker container livekit/ingress with openvidu/ingress in your LiveKit deployment to support RTSP pulling, but there is a small detail that prevents so: this little change is also needed in the livekit-server container. livekit-server checks the URL protocol when receiving a createIngress request, and rtsp(s) is not supported by default. We had to allow it in our own fork of livekit-server for the request to be accepted.

We have not opened a PR to the livekit/ingress and livekit/livekit repositories because the change is substantial enough to make the merging a slow process, and we needed RTSP pulling urgently. However, if the LiveKit team wishes to officially incorporate it, that would be great.

[t-animal]

Any chance this might get incorporated? I would appreciate being able to use livekit for a project, but at the moment we cannot use it, because we need rtsp ingress.