Streaming from IP Camera

[jasperrocks]

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.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

This forum is primarily for OBS software development, rather than end-user usage support
So, for a better response, go to your Operating System of choice (Windows, MacOS, or Linux) and post there.

As for you request, I won't respond further to this post in this forum, but to get you started,
- Yes, typically there are ways to get feed from IP camera into OBS... but not always directly... it depends.. sorry
What you need to do is determine what protocol the camera uses (pointing to an IP isn't valid, you have to configure in advance for which protocol to use). The camera will send out a video stream using one or more of a couple different standards. Typically low-end IP cameras use RTSP, and if I recall correctly, you can configure VLC as a media source for RTSP (this is from memory, I'm not taking time to research further, I'll let you do that), or set up something at OS level, and then point OBS to that Media Source... the details can be OS specific
- the other, uglier, approach is to bring camera video feed up in a browser, and use Window or Browser capture for that video... this is your lowest quality way to get the video... and depending on details... may be pretty poor (or fine.. just depends)
And as OBS is a user-interactive App, it means running computationally intensive real-time video encoding the entire time you want the live feed. Personally, that is something I'd avoid. For a livestream 24/7 simple camera feed like this, I'd be inclined to get a camera that can directly feed to Facebook, skipping OBS or any other locally running computer altogether
so can you (livestream 24/7 a single camera view via OBS? yes. Should you? I wouldn't (without knowing more about the use case/scenario)

 

[jasperrocks]

Thank you, I wasn't sure where to ask my question, I'll copy it to the Linux forum.

 

[xc0z]

Thank you, I wasn't sure where to ask my question, I'll copy it to the Linux forum.

dear god... his response above was incredibly unhelpful. A lot of text, and nothing useful.

If you're buying a IP CAM which is usually wifi or ethernet based, that cam is likely going to support RTSP.
The issue with cheap cams like wyze, amcrest, foscam, etc is their frame rates, resolutions, mics color definition and all the important stuff is often very poor - because you're not looking for definition, just confirmation that yes - something happened.

Get a good webcam, or a Hikvision bullet cam with 60fps. These cams are okay for what you want to do.

Being "remote" to you is a issue. You'll have to setup the streambox on site to access local IP's.
A url like this is a valid wyze cam RTSP url:
rtsp://Admin:Admin12345@192.168.1.20/live
you can add it by clicking the + button in sources, and choosing media source.
uncheck "Local", and paste the line in your "input".
This ip address will not be the same as yours, nor the username and password. heck, even the whole URL might be different. you're going to have to figure it out on a cam by cam basis, depending on what you bought.

As for your stream... your computer needs to be powerful, support NVENC for video encoding, and not look like crap to keep people watching. Audio needs to be good. Audio needs to be in sync with video. lighting needs to be good.... and uptime is important if you plan to go for 24/7... but i think Facebook only supports 12h sessions... so you'd need to automate and restart the session.

There's a lot to consider. Obs is good for including Overlays, custom graphics and audio mixing.
Get the stupid direct-to-facebook cam if you can't configure or are unable to understand how to configure this... but it's gunna be garbage.

There.
Where's my five bucks?