Fixin Raspistill and Raspivid for Headless Streaming on the Raspberry Pi

Recently I got 2 Raspberry Pi Camera modules for my Raspberry Pi boards for some projects I have in mind. I was sad to find out I could not stream unless I had a monitor connected to the Pi and after some additional digging I found out that the initial version of the tools Raspistill and Raspivid the no preview option was broken causing it to not work. After some digging in the forums and trial and error I found how to fix it while the tools are updated and added to the package repo. Plus it was a good exercise in compiling files for ARM.

Update your system applications and download the required software to compile userland:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install git gcc build-essential cmake vlc

Download and configure sources

Create a folder to hold development files and clone the latest userland for raspian.

cd ~
mkdir Development
git clone git://github.com/raspberrypi/userland.git
cd userland

Create the proper make files:

sed -i 's/if (DEFINED CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE)/if (NOT DEFINED CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE)/g' makefiles/cmake/arm-linux.cmake

Fix Raspistill

Open Raspistill command source file at line 1034:

nano +1034 host_applications/linux/apps/raspicam/RaspiStill.c

Modify the line from:

MMAL_STATUS_T status = -1;

to:

MMAL_STATUS_T status = MMAL_SUCCESS;

Fix Raspivid

Open the raspivid source file at line 852:

nano +852 host_applications/linux/apps/raspicam/RaspiVid.c

Modify the line from:

MMAL_STATUS_T status = -1;

to:

MMAL_STATUS_T status = MMAL_SUCCESS;

Build and Install the Latest Userland

Configure a build folder and build and install the userland binaries. This should take around 30 to 45 minutes:

mkdir build
cd build
sudo cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
sudo make
sudo make install

You should now be able to create a steam with VLC and connect to it on a headless system using the -n parameter for no preview:

raspivid -o - -t -1 -w 920 -h 540  -n | cvlc -vvv --network-caching=0 stream:///dev/stdin --sout '#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8554/}' :demux=h264

Comments

[Justin]

Definitely found this really helpful when setting up my build environment! How do you make just the raspivid and raspistill apps without having to go through and compile all of the default apps within the git download?

[Carlos Perez]

To be honest i have not been able

[Greg Smith]

I've just tried this but the code must be newer; RaspiStill.c has no line like the one shown, but it has the 'after' line (with MMAL_SUCCESS) at line 1157. likewise RaspiVid.c has the 'after' line at 919.

So I just tried building it anyway, and the new raspivid ("v1.2") gives me the same problem. The output mp4 file is of completely plausible size for the time and bitrate, and has some indications of being properly formatted, but VNC (on windows) and Windows media player won't play it. VNC at least recognizes the frame size, puts up a black frame of the right size and then immediately stops. I can't be sure, but the debug log from VNC seems to indicate that there is 'stream format' info (such as the frame size) but no actual content was found. There's nothing that looks like an error, but nothing that looks like anything got decoded either.
Is this what happens with the 'old' raspivid when you don't have a monitor hooked up?

Note, I have not yet tried raspivid with a monitor hooked up, I don't have one handy right now, I'm running raspivid over ssh, redirect to a file, and then copying the output files via sFTP and trying to play them.
The raspistill has worked fine - except when I did a time lapse of 600 frames every 2 second for 1200 seconds, I actually got 600 frames taken every 2.5 seconds, spread out over 1500 seconds. So it's either running 25% slow on its timing, or maybe it's taking .5 seconds to store each frame and not accounting for that in the -t or -ti options. Both of which seem strange.

[Carlos Perez]

You are supposed to use VLC not media player or VNC

[Greg Smith]

Right. I meant VLC.

[John Masseria]

Great help, thank you!

Two questions:

Do you really need to run cmake and make as root?

Why do you change "if (DEFINED CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE)" to "if (NOT DEFINED CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE)"? Or does that just eliminate the warning error when building on the Pi?

[Adrian Arias]

Thanks for this information, for me it was really helpful.

Do you think it is possible to choose the level profile of the H264 by changing

from:
param.profile[0].level = MMAL_VIDEO_LEVEL_H264_4;

to:
param.profile[0].level = MMAL_VIDEO_LEVEL_H264_3;

and then build and install the userland binaries?

At least here "userland / interface / mmal / mmal_parameters_video.h" it seems that there are several levels to choose.