MuMuDVB - MuMuDVB and FFmpeg transcoding Tutorial

By Meftah Tayeb (Tayeb|DOT|Meftah:-)@G.M.A.I.L.C.O.M Reviewed by Brice Dubost (mumudvb@braice.net)

1. Introduction

In the context of TV over IP the necessary bandwidth of the IP network is an important issue. In particular with stream coming from terrestrial or satellite broadcasting which represent about 6MBit/s per service with standard definition. In this context it can be useful to transcode the stream to reduce itś bandwidth footprint.

MuMuDVB is a « air to ip » streaming software. In the following, a method to set-up MuMuDVB and Ffmpeg to perform transcoding is described.

Please note that this way can probably be improved, feel free to provide feedback.

2. Step 1: Configure MumuDVB

You need at least one service/channel up and running to perform transcoding.

you have multiple choices to configure MuMuDVB, please refer to the main documentation for more details.

An example configuration is provided here for "example channels" on SomeSat (26.0E):

unicast=1
port_http=8080
freq=12476
pol=v
srate=27504
autoconf_radios=1
autoconfiguration=full
multicast_ttl=16
dvr_buffer_size=40

3. Step 2: Start MuMuDVB

In order to start MuMuDVB with your configuration, use the following:

mumudvb -c /path-to-config/mumudvb.conf -d

The -d flag allow to obtain the message on the command line instead of the standard log. Once everything is working you can run without the -d flag alowing MuMuDVB to run as a deamon.

With several cards you can use “--card=X” or add “card=X” to your configuration file where X is the card number.

4. Step 3: FFserver configuration

With MuMuDVB up and running, we need to configure FFMpeg Server to perform the transcoding task.

Before transcoding, please check that your stream is properly up and running in MPEG2TS over UDP

Example FFserver configuration:

#specify the HTTP /RTSP Unicast port:

Port 80
RTSPPort 554
#bind FFserver to a specific interface, better to be same as MuMu Interface
BindAddress 192.168.100.100
#Max http connection limitation
MaxHTTPConnections 1000
#how much IPTV client you want at the same time ?
MaxClients 200
#max bandwith to process
MaxBandwidth 1000000
CustomLog -
#tvfeed01 channel feed configuration
<Feed tvfeed01.ffm>
#specify the temporary file to use to dump the stream to FFserver
File /tmp/tvfeed01.ffm
FileMaxSize 1000K
</Feed>
#all others feed's is similar;
<Feed tvfeed02.ffm>
File /tmp/tvfeed02.ffm
FileMaxSize 1000K
</Feed>
<Feed tvfeed03.ffm>
File /tmp/tvfeed03.ffm
FileMaxSize 1000K
</Feed>
#Tvfeed01 Stream Definition
#note the .asf reference, we're encapsulating our stream in ASF format. please check FFmpeg documentation for other formats.
<Stream tvfeed01.asf>
#referencing the previously defined feed, Tvfeed01
Feed tvfeed01.ffm
#specify the streaming format
Format asf
#prevent looping on a live channel, this is a continuous stream and not a file.
NoLoop
#Video codec definition
VideoCodec mpeg4
VideoFrameRate 25
VideoBufferSize 100000
videoBitRate 512k
VideoQMin 1
VideoQMax 31
VideoSize 352x240
PreRoll 0
#Audio codec definition
AudioCodec libmp3lame
AudioBitRate 64
AudioChannels 2
AudioSampleRate 24000
</Stream>
#all others stream is similar.
<Stream tvfeed02.asf>
Feed tvfeed02.ffm
Format asf
NoLoop
VideoCodec mpeg4
VideoFrameRate 25
VideoBufferSize 100000
videoBitRate 256k
VideoQMin 1
VideoQMax 31
VideoSize 352x240
PreRoll 0
AudioCodec libmp3lame
AudioBitRate 48
AudioChannels 2
AudioSampleRate 24000
</Stream>
<Stream tvfeed03.asf>
Feed tvfeed03.ffm
Format asf
NoLoop
VideoCodec mpeg4
VideoFrameRate 25
VideoBufferSize 100000
VideoBitRate 256k
VideoQMin 1
VideoQMax 31
VideoSize 352x240
PreRoll 0
AudioCodec libmp3lame
AudioBitRate 48
AudioChannels 2
AudioSampleRate 24000
</Stream>
#definition of the status stream to be able to see our FFserver status using a web browser
<Stream stat.html>
   Format status
</Stream>

For the moment we have defined the stream and the transcoding you need. From this configuration Ffserver will wait for clients on is socket to push the data on the ffm files. The transcoded channels will be availaible on the .asm files

5. Step 4: start FFserver

to start FFserver do:

ffserver -f Path-To-Config-File.cfg

6. Step 5: Push the streams to FFserver using FFmpeg

For the moment, FFserver have no data to process, we need to push the data from MuMuDVB to FFserver, for this we can use ffmpeg.

after starting the FFserver, run the following:

ffmpeg -i udp://@239.100.0.0:1234 http://192.168.100.100/tvfeed01.ffm

This line have to be changed according to your configuration where the first part is the access path to the UDP channel (the @ after udp:// specifies that the channel have to be accessed in multicast), the second part corresponds to the path defined in your ffserver configuration.

You need multiple FFmpeg instances, one per channel.

To start ffmpeg in background please use nohup ffmpeg -i … Note that you can auto start FFMpeg per feed by adding the following inside your feed definition: launch ffmpeg -i udp://@X.X.X.X:1234 where X.X.X.X is your Multicast group.

Now the channels can be accessed in unicast on URLs like http://192.168.100.100/tvfeed01.asf

Example AAC/H.264 transcoded stream inside a FLV container:

Port 8888
BindAddress 0.0.0.0
MaxHTTPConnections 20000
MaxClients 10000
MaxBandwidth 1000000
CustomLog -
<Feed other-tvfeed.ffm>
File /tmp/other-tvfeed.ffm
FileMaxSize 100M
ACL allow 127.0.0.1
launch ffmpeg -i udp://@239.100.1.13:1234
</Feed>

<Stream other-tvfeed.flv>
Feed other-tvfeed.ffm
Format flv
AudioBitRate 64
AudioChannels 2
AudioSampleRate 44100
AVOptionAudio flags +global_header
VideoBitRate 256
VideoBufferSize 400
VideoFrameRate 25
VideoBitRateTolerance 100
VideoSize 704x480
VideoGopSize 12
AudioCodec aac
VideoCodec libx264
AVOptionVideo coder 0
AVOptionVideo bf 0
AVOptionVideo flags +loop
AVOptionVideo partitions +parti8x8+parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8
AVOptionVideo me_method hex
AVOptionVideo subq 7
AVOptionVideo me_range 16
AVOptionVideo g 250
AVOptionVideo keyint_min 10
AVOptionVideo sc_threshold 40
AVOptionVideo i_qfactor 0.71
AVOptionVideo b_strategy 1
AVOptionVideo qcomp 0.6
AVOptionVideo qmin 10
AVOptionVideo qmax 51
AVOptionVideo qdiff 4
AVOptionVideo refs 3
AVOptionVideo directpred 1
AVOptionVideo trellis 1
AVOptionVideo wpredp 0
AVOptionVideo flags +global_header
Title 'Some Great tv'
comment 'Great tv channel'
author 'Humanity'
StartSendOnKey
</Stream>
<Stream stat.html>
Format status

ACL allow 192.168.0.0 192.168.255.255
</Stream>

7. Acknowledgements

thank you Brice and Matthias for helping me all the time it is very appreciated

thank to everyone that helped me getting my home brew IPTV up and running, I can watch everywhere, anywhere.

thank to Georgeus roger for helping me with Oscam setup so now I have my channels descrambled.

if you need any help please don’t hesitate to contact me on the mailing list!