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aa-recorder

Records RTSP streams from IP cameras to mp4 files. Automatically deletes files when the disk gets full. No frills. Hopefully just works.

Installation

Make sure ffmpeg, node, and npm are installed, then npm install -g aa-recorder.

Usage

aa-recorder yourConfig.json

Config file

The configuration is a JSON file. See the examples directory.

WARNING

This script automatically deletes files. The way it does so is currently very dumb, and just munches the oldest files in the directory when space gets tight. So don't point it at a directory containing anything you don't want it to delete. It's also recommended not to run this script as root.

Top-level options

  • storageDir: where to store the video files. Required.
  • cleanupThreshold: Minimum amount of free disk space to maintain. The oldest files will be deleted from the storageDir when this is exceeded. Understands suffixes e.g. (MB, GB, k, m, g). Default 10GB.
  • cameras: List of cameras, see below.

Camera options

  • name: Descriptive name for the camera. This is used to generate file names.
  • url: The RTSP URL to use for recording. For AXIS cameras this is typically rtsp://your-camera-ip-or-hostname/axis-media/media.amp. Use rtsp://username:password@hostname-or-ip if you need credentials (but see the known issues below!)
  • args: Arguments to be added to the URL as a query string. Optional. These are passed through verbatim to the camera, so check your camera documentation for more info. It's important to specify a maximum duration to the camera, either in the URL or in the args; otherwise you'll end up with one big file.
  • respawnThreshold: Minimum amount of time the ffmpeg process should run for, in milliseconds. If the process runs for a shorter time, a delay is incurred before the process is restarted. Default 5 seconds.
  • respawnDelay: The amount of time, in milliseconds, to wait before retrying if the respawnThreshold is not exceeded. Default 60 seconds.
  • fileType: The file type to record to. Default mp4.

Run as a daemon

No built-in facility is provided for running as a daemon; for my purposes it's easier to run as a systemd service. An example unit file with installation instructions is provided in the examples directory.

Known issues

Your camera credentials will show up in ps aux. Therefore, you should use limited credentials (view-only on the camera) and/or run this on a machine where only trusted folks have access. Fixing would require a patch to ffmpeg and/or a rewrite to eliminate the ffmpeg dependency.

License

MIT license. See LICENSE file.