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Video stream from camera is not being shown + errors "Invalid data found when processing input" from ffmpeg #463

@kha84

Description

@kha84

Describe the bug
Hello guys. I have a cheap chinese camera. It works great via RSTP:

  • with VLC - I can watch the stream for hours by just providing the rstp URL like rtsp://192.168.28.53:554/live/ch00_0
  • the same for ffplay - it works just fine by just running ffplay rtsp://192.168.28.53:554/live/ch00_0
  • and I even managed to install and configure ZoneMinder - although it's rusty and cumbersome to use
    But for some reason the videostream from this my camera is not being shown in the camera.ui no matter what kind of combination of settings I tried. The UI says "camera is offline" with randomly splashing red "Request failed with status code 500" banners. In logs I can see "Stream exited with error! (null) - rtsp://192.168.28.53:554/live/ch00_0: Invalid data found when processing input"
    However the only place where I can get the still images from camera all the time is "Videoanalisys" section in camera settings! I tried to enable / disable it - but nothing changes. I can still see frames there, but that's the only place I can see them.

In the console, where I originally started the camera.ui I can see these logs are being printed:

[8/30/2025, 8:18:48 PM] [camera.ui] jooan a6m-u: Restart videoanalysis session..
[8/30/2025, 8:19:02 PM] [camera.ui]  ERROR  jooan a6m-u: FFmpeg videoanalysis process exited with error! (null) - rtsp://192.168.28.53:554/live/ch00_1: Invalid data found when processing input 
[8/30/2025, 8:19:02 PM] [camera.ui]  ERROR  jooan a6m-u: FFmpeg videoanalysis process exited with error! (null) - rtsp://192.168.28.53:554/live/ch00_1: Invalid data found when processing input 

I tried to turn on the debug mode on camera in settings, while hoping to see with what options ffmpeg is being called (to try to reproduce it myself), but the "debug" option is only showing the ffmpeg exhaust, and not the way how ffmpeg was invoked.

Appreciate any hint on how can I troubleshoot it.

Environment

  • Node.js Version: v22.19.0
  • Camera UI Version: 1.1.7
  • Operating System: Ubuntu 22 LTS
  • Browser: Firefox

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