NGINX RTMP Server using Docker

Docker image with Nginx using the nginx-rtmp-module module for live video streaming.

This is an adaptation to the image created by tiangolo, which was inspired by other similar previous images from dvdgiessen, jasonrivers, aevumdecessus and by an OBS Studio post.

Description

The main purpose for this project is to allow streaming from OBS Studio to different clients at the same time. This Docker image can be used to create an RTMP server for video streaming using Nginx and nginx-rtmp-module, built from the following sources: Nginx 1.15.0 and nginx-rtmp-module 1.2.1.

If you wish to use different versions of either component, update the environment variables in this project's Dockerfile:

# Versions of Nginx and nginx-rtmp-module to use
ENV NGINX_VERSION nginx-1.18.0
ENV NGINX_RTMP_MODULE_VERSION 1.2.1

Testing locally with OBS Studio and VLC

• First you'll need to set up a stream key which will be used as a unique identifier that allows a user to connect to the RTMP and broadcast their video feed

  • I've provided an update_stream_keys.sh script that you can run to update the key in index.html. Simply set an environment variable like so: export STREAM_KEY_1=some-key, then run the script to update.
  • If you intend on broadcasting 2 video feeds concurrently, do the same with another variable named STREAM_KEY_2 If these variables aren't set, the default values for each key will be test-1 and test-2 respectively

• Build the image and run the container:

docker build -t nginx-rtmp .
docker run -d -p 1935:1935 -p 8088:8088 nginx-rtmp

# Or with docker-compose
docker compose up -d

OBS

• Open OBS Studio
• Click the "Settings" button
• Go to the "Stream" section
• In "Stream Type" select "Custom Streaming Server"
• In the "URL" field, enter rtmp://<ip_of_host>/live replacing <ip_of_host> with the IP of the host in which the container is running. For example: rtmp://127.0.0.1/live
• In the "Stream key" field, use a "key" that will be used later in the client URL to display that specific stream. For example: test
• Click the "OK" button
• In the section "Sources" click de "Add" button (+) and select a source (for example "Screen Capture") and configure it as you need
• Click the "Start Streaming" button

VLC

• Open a VLC player (it also works in Raspberry Pi using omxplayer)
• Click in the "Media" menu
• Click in "Open Network Stream"
• Enter the URL from above as rtmp://<ip_of_host>/live/<key> replacing <ip_of_host> with the IP of the host in which the container is running and <key> with the key you created in OBS Studio. For example: rtmp://127.0.0.1/live/test
• Click "Play"
• Now VLC should start playing whatever you are transmitting from OBS Studio

RTMP Stats/Restream via web browser

• Open a web browser

• To view RTMP statistics, browse to http://<ip_of_host>:8080/stat

• To view the full RTMP stream, browse to http://<ip_of_host>:8088/hls

• Replace <ip_of_host> above with the IP of the host in which the container is running. For example: http://127.0.0.1:8080/stat or http://127.0.0.1:8088/hls

Debugging

If something is not working you can check the logs of the container with:

docker logs nginx-rtmp

Technical details

• This image is built from the same base official images that most of the other official images, as Python, Node, Postgres, Nginx itself, etc. Specifically, buildpack-deps which is in turn based on debian. So, if you have any other image locally you probably have the base image layers already downloaded

• It is built from the official sources of Nginx and nginx-rtmp-module without adding anything else. (Surprisingly, most of the available images that include nginx-rtmp-module are made from different sources, old versions or add several other components). Here's the documentation related to nginx-rtmp-module

• It has a simple default configuration that should allow you to send one or more streams to it and have several clients receiving multiple copies of those streams simultaneously. (It includes rtmp_auto_push and an automatic number of worker processes)