RTSP

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A Pythonic RTSP client and microserver for video and computer vision work, from rapid prototyping to moderate-weight production. Pull frames from any RTSP stream or local capture device as Pillow images, preview streams in a window, or serve a frame buffer over RTSP with a single context manager. For multi-client distribution, pair it with a MediaMTX relay. For performance-intensive pipelines requiring high-throughput encoding or minimal latency, use OpenCV, GStreamer, or FFmpeg directly.

Features

• read most-recent RTSP frame as Pillow Image on demand
• preview stream in a tkinter window. 'q' or ESC to quit.
• URI shortcuts for rapid prototyping
  • integers (or numeric strings) open a local capture device, e.g. rtsp.Client(0)
  • bare host strings default to rtsp://, e.g. rtsp.Client('192.168.1.1/stream')
  • Raspberry Pi camera: enable the V4L2 driver (dtoverlay=imx219 or similar in /boot/config.txt) and use rtsp.Client(0)
• lightweight RTSP server
• rtmp:// and rtmps:// URIs work with Client and Source using the same API as RTSP
• enumerate local capture devices with rtsp.list_devices()

Examples

Client Use

Use RTSP access credentials in your connection string e.g.

RTSP_URL = f"rtsp://{USERNAME}:{PASSWORD}@192.168.1.221:554/11"

One-off Retrieval

import rtsp
client = rtsp.Client(rtsp_server_uri = 'rtsp://...', verbose=True)
client.read().show()
client.close()

Stream Preview

import rtsp
with rtsp.Client(0) as client: # previews USB webcam 0
    client.preview()

Continuous Retrieval

import rtsp

with rtsp.Client(rtsp_server_uri = 'rtsp://...') as client:
    _image = client.read()

    while True:
        process_image(_image)
        _image = client.read(raw=True)

Resize Retrieval Image

import rtsp

RTSP_URL = "rtsp://..."
client = rtsp.Client(rtsp_server_uri = RTSP_URL)

width = 640
height = 480

client.read().resize([width, height]).show()
client.close()

Rotate Retrieval Image

import rtsp

RTSP_URL = "rtsp://..."
client = rtsp.Client(rtsp_server_uri = RTSP_URL)

client.read().resize([client.read().size[0], client.read().size[0]]).rotate(90).resize([client.read().size[1], client.read().size[0]]).show()
client.close()

Save Retrieval Image (With the TimeStamp Format and Set Number of Save Image)

import rtsp
import datetime

RTSP_URL = "rtsp://..."
IMAGE_COUNT = 10

client = rtsp.Client(rtsp_server_uri = RTSP_URL)
while client.isOpened() and IMAGE_COUNT > 0:
    client.read().save("./"+ str(datetime.datetime.now()) +".jpg")
    IMAGE_COUNT = IMAGE_COUNT - 1
client.close()

Source Use

Serve frames locally and preview them. source.client_uri gives the address to connect to, and verbose=True logs the URI and fps on startup:

import rtsp

frames = ['frame1.jpg', 'frame2.jpg', 'frame3.jpg']

with rtsp.Source('rtsp://0.0.0.0:8554/live', fps=1,
                 frame_buffer=frames, verbose=True) as source:
    with rtsp.Client(source.client_uri) as client:
        client.preview()   # blocks; press q or ESC to quit

Serve without a viewer. serve_forever() blocks and loops the buffer indefinitely until Ctrl-C:

import rtsp

frames = ['frame1.jpg', 'frame2.jpg', 'frame3.jpg']

with rtsp.Source('rtsp://0.0.0.0:8554/live', frame_buffer=frames) as source:
    source.serve_forever()   # blocks; Ctrl-C to stop

Multi-client stream via MediaMTX relay. Also, frames can be added incrementally with put():

# Terminal: ./mediamtx          (listens on :8554 by default)

import rtsp

# serve=False pushes to the running MediaMTX relay.
# Any number of Client() instances can then read from the same URI.
with rtsp.Source('rtsp://localhost:8554/live', serve=False) as source:
    for frame in incoming_frames():
        source.put(frame)

# Elsewhere, any number of concurrent readers:
with rtsp.Client('rtsp://localhost:8554/live') as client:
    client.preview()