Can't get to see my live stream via FFMPEG

[incline02]

The problem

I'm trying to have live stream from home assistant into homekit. Homekit only accepts H264 codec and so I want to use FFMPEG to output that.

The source feed is from a virtual camera that sends JPEG so it cannot be put directly into homekit and isn't encoded the right way via Camera Proxy or Generic Camera. Neither work in homekit.

Instead I went to go2rtc where the camera feed is successfully displayed. it then gives the dozen links as per the attached screenshot but non of them work in my integration of FFMPEG screenshot below too.

I tried some arguments, some other public test link but wouldn't work either.

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2024.12.2

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

none

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

FFMPEG

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/camera.ffmpeg/

Diagnostics information

FFMPEG doesn't provide logs or I wasn't able to find them since it doesn't appear in the UI

Example YAML snippet

ffmpeg:

camera:
  - platform: ffmpeg
    name: FFmpeg HTTP Camera
    input: http://192.168.1.157:1984/api/stream.mjpeg?src=camera_dynamic
    extra_arguments: -rtsp_transport tcp -r 15 -c:v copy

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

TLDR: I tried

1. source stream -> homekit = preview ok, live stream constantly performing)
2. source stream -> camera proxy -> homekit = same
3. source stream -> FFMPEG -> into homekit = nothing displays
4. source stream into -> into go2rtc = works
5. go2trc -> FFMPEG = nothing displays (says "unavailable" on HA dashboard or HK)

The source camera is from a vacuum robot integration (Dreame from u/tesshack). The integration doesn't expose the robot's hardware camera but its map as virtual camera where you can see the robot as it progresses on your home map. It has an entity and so exposes in the dashboard and works as expected. Using Homekit Bridge to pull it into homekit results in the preview refreshing every 10 seconds which is expected from homekit. However, going into the live stream stays on constant buffering, indicating homekit isn't getting the data it needs as stream.

So I turned to Camera Proxy, same effect. then Generic Camera, same effect. Tesshack recommended FFMPEG but it never worked. go2rtc doesn't take dynamic url (for the camera token) in its config file so I had to fixe that first with shell and python to generate a new url every time the token changes, rewrite the full url and replace go2rtc's config file. Now that works bu the links go2rtc generates won't work in FFMEPG.

Even the initial link from the go2rtc view won't work, nor does it let me integrate a new proxy or generic camera with it.

[home-assistant]

ffmpeg documentation
ffmpeg source

[issue-triage-workflows]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates.
Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍
This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.