# Streaming with IP camera



## jasperrocks (Jan 12, 2022)

I have a client who runs a cat rescue/sanctuary and wants to have a continuous live feed of the cats to her facebook page. I have no trouble setting up the facebook part but I can not find an option to use the IP address of the camera as my source. Is this even possible? All of this is "remote" to me, it originates at the sanctuary and goes wireless from the camera directly to her wifi modem and then to the internet. I'm trying to find out the protocol being used but haven't heard back from the person who installed the camera.

The sanctuary doesn't have a computer that could be used to control the feed locally but I have a Rasberry Pi 3 that could be installed. Would that work and if so, does anyone have any programming tips?


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## Lawrence_SoCal (Jan 12, 2022)

Thanks for re-posting to this forum
1. Have you figured out which protocols the camera supports? that is required info, as it will then determine how to connect/accept that feed and get it into OBS
2. If you are not going to be doing anything with the camera feed other than re-transmitting, ie not compositing other sources, then maybe bypassing OBS and sending direct to Facebook? 

OBS is a sophisticated tool, and may be overkill for this use case. And though not my area, real-time video encoding is VERY computationally demanding. I can't see a Rasberry Pi even coming close. but I could be wrong. 
However, if you video feed manipulation is simple, there are:
a. cameras that could do that direct in-camera and directly send video to Facebook, no other compute device required
b. some streaming dedicated hardware devices that may be more appropriate (cheaper? less electrical power, etc) than running a PC 24/7?


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## zendril (Jan 13, 2022)

I'm attempting to do the same thing with a Raspberry PI 4, 8GB.

Takes the 4k RTSP output from an IP camera and turn around and send it to RTMP (youtube).

I have ffmpeg working fine with this and it takes ~2% cpu...
When I attempt this in OBS, as soon as I add the RTSP stream into the source (Media Source), the CPU spikes to ~50% and the framerates shown are only 2-3 FPS.

So I'm not sure what the extra overhead OBS is putting on the system. Was hoping others on the forum here would have an idea of how to perhaps tweak what OBS is doing under the covers.. or even run OBS in a headless mode perhaps?


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## Tuna (Jan 13, 2022)

OBS is a GPU composer. The Pi does not have the GPU requirements to run OBS. So it runs in software emulation instead. This will result in very poor performance. The Pi is not a suitable device to run OBS.


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## jasperrocks (Jan 13, 2022)

Still waiting to find out protocol. Okay, Pi is out, it was just a thought. Someone donated the camera and I need to work with it. Buying a new camera that's designed to feed directly to facebook is not an option at this point.  Buying cat food is the priority, she cares for a LOT of cats. If this camera doesn't work, we'd have to create a fundraiser just for a new one.


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## Lawrence_SoCal (Jan 13, 2022)

totally understand. I started learning livestreaming 20 months ago for a charity as well.. understand budget constraints.


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## jasperrocks (Jan 14, 2022)

The other dilemma with this project is the quality of the feed. I'm spending a lot of time trying to help but in the end, I don't know if it's worth the effort. She's on wireless internet from her ISP and we're hoping to get a boost in her upload speed to see if that improves the signal. Here's the feed if anyone wants to have a look. http://186.148.97.95:50000/cam/r1280


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## jasperrocks (Jan 14, 2022)

That indoor feed might give the impression that she just warehouses cats but they have an enormous outside area to play in and here's that camera, http://186.148.97.95:50002/cam/r320


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