Add support HTTP-FLV with H265 from new Reolink cameras

[0x464e]

Hi,

So I just received my new Reolink E1 Zoom ("v2", so the new version they silently upgraded to with higher MP, narrower fov, etc).
I quite like the camera, its form factor, its functionality, etc. But trying to get it to play nicely with Frigate has just been a HUGE pain.

So few things I've found out:

• The camera is always in H265 when in 4K, can't be changed
• RTSP H265 works in go2rtc no problem
• BUT, Reolink RTSP is very bad, it stutters a lot, completely unusable if you want a smooth picture
• Ok, well luckily the RTMP and HTTP FLV (which is just RTMP wrapped in HTTP) work great
  (apparently the HTTP-FLV stream is most realiable)
• BUT, go2rtc will just seemingly refuse to work with H265 RTMP/HTTP-FLV
• If I drop the resolution of the camera so it goes back to H264, go2rtc will work with RTMP/HTTP-FLV

Now what really annoys me, is that I can ffplay the H265 RTMP or HTTP-FLV stream no problem whatsoever. Butter smooth 4k playback with no problems.
So why can't go2rtc work with it if ffplaying works just fine? Is there some gotcha config I'm missing, or some technical limitation?

Some outputs:

If I ffprobe the HTTP-FLV stream, I get:

ffprobe version 8.0-full_build-www.gyan.dev Copyright (c) 2007-2025 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 15.2.0 (Rev8, Built by MSYS2 project)
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-static --disable-w32threads --disable-autodetect --enable-fontconfig --enable-iconv --enable-gnutls --enable-lcms2 --enable-libxml2 --enable-gmp --enable-bzlib --enable-lzma --enable-libsnappy --enable-zlib --enable-librist --enable-libsrt --enable-libssh --enable-libzmq --enable-avisynth --enable-libbluray --enable-libcaca --enable-libdvdnav --enable-libdvdread --enable-sdl2 --enable-libaribb24 --enable-libaribcaption --enable-libdav1d --enable-libdavs2 --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libquirc --enable-libuavs3d --enable-libxevd --enable-libzvbi --enable-liboapv --enable-libqrencode --enable-librav1e --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libvvenc --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxavs2 --enable-libxeve --enable-libxvid --enable-libaom --enable-libjxl --enable-libvpx --enable-mediafoundation --enable-libass --enable-frei0r --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-liblensfun --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvmaf --enable-libzimg --enable-amf --enable-cuda-llvm --enable-cuvid --enable-dxva2 --enable-d3d11va --enable-d3d12va --enable-ffnvcodec --enable-libvpl --enable-nvdec --enable-nvenc --enable-vaapi --enable-libshaderc --enable-vulkan --enable-libplacebo --enable-opencl --enable-libcdio --enable-openal --enable-libgme --enable-libmodplug --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libshine --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libilbc --enable-libgsm --enable-liblc3 --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopus --enable-libspeex --enable-libvorbis --enable-ladspa --enable-libbs2b --enable-libflite --enable-libmysofa --enable-librubberband --enable-libsoxr --enable-chromaprint --enable-whisper
  libavutil      60.  8.100 / 60.  8.100
  libavcodec     62. 11.100 / 62. 11.100
  libavformat    62.  3.100 / 62.  3.100
  libavdevice    62.  1.100 / 62.  1.100
  libavfilter    11.  4.100 / 11.  4.100
  libswscale      9.  1.100 /  9.  1.100
  libswresample   6.  1.100 /  6.  1.100
Input #0, flv, from 'http://ip/flv?port=1935&app=bcs&stream=channel0_main.bcs&user=user&password=password':
  Metadata:
    displayWidth    : 3840
    displayHeight   : 2160
    rotate          : 0
  Duration: 00:00:00.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
  Stream #0:0: Video: hevc (Main), yuv420p(tv), 3840x2160, 15 fps, 20 tbr, 1k tbn
  Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (LC), 16000 Hz, mono, fltp, start 0.011000

In go2rtc (I now even took Frigate out of the equation, I'm running just the go2rtc docker container), when I "add temporary stream" with the HTTP-FLV url, and then click on "stream". I get a stream that's only blackscreen with audio. (Audio is extremely delayed and laggy).
Under info for the stream while playing it, I get:

{
  "producers": [
    {
      "id": 24,
      "format_name": "flv",
      "protocol": "http",
      "remote_addr": "ip",
      "url": "http://ip/flv?port=1935\u0026app=bcs\u0026stream=channel0_main.bcs\u0026user=user\u0026password=password",
      "medias": [
        "audio, recvonly, MPEG4-GENERIC/16000/1"
      ],
      "receivers": [
        {
          "id": 25,
          "codec": {
            "channels": 1,
            "codec_name": "aac",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "sample_rate": 16000
          },
          "childs": [
            26
          ],
          "bytes": 35363,
          "packets": 142
        }
      ],
      "bytes_recv": 5078361
    }
  ],
  "consumers": [
    {
      "id": 23,
      "format_name": "mse/fmp4",
      "protocol": "ws",
      "remote_addr": "172.17.0.1:59196",
      "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/142.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
      "medias": [
        "video, sendonly, H264, H265",
        "audio, sendonly, MPEG4-GENERIC, PCMA, PCMU, L16, PCML, OPUS"
      ],
      "senders": [
        {
          "id": 26,
          "codec": {
            "channels": 1,
            "codec_name": "aac",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "sample_rate": 16000
          },
          "parent": 25,
          "bytes": 35363,
          "packets": 142
        }
      ],
      "bytes_send": 50699
    }
  ]
}

I would really appreciate some advice into what is going on here and how I can fix it.

[AlexxIT]

H265 isn't a standard for FLV. I don't know how Reolink supports it. go2rtc has basic support for this codec in FLV. It might not be working correctly.

[0x464e]

H265 isn't a standard for FLV. I don't know how Reolink supports it. go2rtc has basic support for this codec in FLV. It might not be working correctly.

What about RTMP? That doesn't seem to work either in go2rtc.
It's just that because both HTTP-FLV and RTMP can be ffplayed just fine, I feel like there should be a way to get it work with go2rtc.

Is there something I can do to help debug this, or if I want to dive deep myself to look at this, any recommendations what to look at? I'm of course not familiar with your codebase or how this program works, but I'm not afraid of taking a look.

[AlexxIT]

RTMP is almost identical to FLV. It's the same stream, but the byte order is slightly different.

Perhaps only direct access to the camera can help.

And you can always use ffmpeg source for this case.

[0x464e]

Perhaps only direct access to the camera can help.

Help with debugging the issue, or what do you mean?

And you can always use ffmpeg source for this case.

I believe I tried, but with no luck.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Could you tell me how to do it?

I have tried:

Just ffmpeg:

ffmpeg:http://ip/flv?port=1935&app=bcs&stream=channel0_main.bcs&user=user&password=password

Result:

webrtc/offer: streams: exec/rtsp
[rtsp @ 0x5c5aa12d5580] dimensions not set
[out#0/rtsp @ 0x5c5aa1387240] Could not write header (incorrect codec parameters ?): Invalid argument

---

ffmpeg: with dimensions

ffmpeg:http://ip/flv?port=1935&app=bcs&stream=channel0_main.bcs&user=user&password=password#width=3840#height=2160

Result:

webrtc/offer: streams: exec/rtsp
[vost#0:0/copy @ 0x571fcce6b540] Filtergraph 'scale=3840:2160' was specified, but codec copy was selected. Filtering and streamcopy cannot be used together.
Error opening output file rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/56cfd6cdd9a6eae9e472a590e092349d.
Error opening output files: Function not implemented

---

ffmpeg: with transcoding to H264

ffmpeg:http://ip/flv?port=1935&app=bcs&stream=channel0_main.bcs&user=user&password=password#video=h264

Result:

webrtc/offer: streams: exec/rtsp
[vist#0:0/none @ 0x646348bb51c0] Decoding requested, but no decoder found for: none
Error opening output file rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/feedabd80bb314d9a9898c9943a1079d.
Error opening output files: Invalid argument

---

ffmpeg: with transcoding to H264 with dimensions

ffmpeg:http://ip/flv?port=1935&app=bcs&stream=channel0_main.bcs&user=user&password=password#video=h264#width=3840#height=2160

Result:

webrtc/offer: streams: exec/rtsp
[vist#0:0/none @ 0x599d76c3b480] Decoding requested, but no decoder found for: none
Error opening output file rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/c6625cf7aa319b69e2e1007492d110cc.
Error opening output files: Invalid argument

[AlexxIT]

I mean, so that I could connect to this FLV stream.

It's very strange that ffmpeg source doesn't work for you. Because ffmpeg worked for you in the first post. There may be a difference in ffmpeg versions. Because, as I said earlier, H265 is not a standard for FLV.

[0x464e]

I mean, so that I could connect to this FLV stream.

I can give you an ffmpeg ... -c copy copy of the stream and a tcp packet dump, or I can even give you access to the actual stream over the internet if you want and would be willing to look at this problem.

It's very strange that ffmpeg source doesn't work for you. Because ffmpeg worked for you in the first post. There may be a difference in ffmpeg versions. Because, as I said earlier, H265 is not a standard for FLV.

Ok, hmm, I now didn't use the Docker container and downloaded the latest Windows x86_64 release (which was just released, I also pulled the latest Docker container, no change). And lo and behold, using ffmpeg:http://192.168.20.69/flv?port=1935&app=bcs&stream=channel0_main.bcs&user=user&password=password works! (Without ffmpeg: still same blackscreen issue as previously)

I guess the Windows exe is using my local ffmpeg from path? And indeed there is a ffmpeg version mismatch.

My local ffmpeg installation:

ffmpeg version 8.0-full_build-www.gyan.dev Copyright (c) 2000-2025 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 15.2.0 (Rev8, Built by MSYS2 project)
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-static --disable-w32threads --disable-autodetect --enable-fontconfig --enable-iconv --enable-gnutls --enable-lcms2 --enable-libxml2 --enable-gmp --enable-bzlib --enable-lzma --enable-libsnappy --enable-zlib --enable-librist --enable-libsrt --enable-libssh --enable-libzmq --enable-avisynth --enable-libbluray --enable-libcaca --enable-libdvdnav --enable-libdvdread --enable-sdl2 --enable-libaribb24 --enable-libaribcaption --enable-libdav1d --enable-libdavs2 --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libquirc --enable-libuavs3d --enable-libxevd --enable-libzvbi --enable-liboapv --enable-libqrencode --enable-librav1e --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libvvenc --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxavs2 --enable-libxeve --enable-libxvid --enable-libaom --enable-libjxl --enable-libvpx --enable-mediafoundation --enable-libass --enable-frei0r --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-liblensfun --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvmaf --enable-libzimg --enable-amf --enable-cuda-llvm --enable-cuvid --enable-dxva2 --enable-d3d11va --enable-d3d12va --enable-ffnvcodec --enable-libvpl --enable-nvdec --enable-nvenc --enable-vaapi --enable-libshaderc --enable-vulkan --enable-libplacebo --enable-opencl --enable-libcdio --enable-openal --enable-libgme --enable-libmodplug --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libshine --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libilbc --enable-libgsm --enable-liblc3 --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopus --enable-libspeex --enable-libvorbis --enable-ladspa --enable-libbs2b --enable-libflite --enable-libmysofa --enable-librubberband --enable-libsoxr --enable-chromaprint --enable-whisper

The ffmpeg installed in the latest Docker container:

ffmpeg version 7.1.2-0+deb13u1 Copyright (c) 2000-2025 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 14 (Debian 14.2.0-19)
configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version=0+deb13u1 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu --arch=amd64 --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --disable-libmfx --disable-omx --enable-gnutls --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcdio --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libdav1d --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libglslang --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libmysofa --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopus --enable-librubberband --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzimg --enable-openal --enable-opencl --enable-opengl --disable-sndio --enable-libvpl --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdrm --enable-libiec61883 --enable-chromaprint --enable-frei0r --enable-ladspa --enable-libbluray --enable-libcaca --enable-libdvdnav --enable-libdvdread --enable-libjack --enable-libpulse --enable-librabbitmq --enable-librist --enable-libsrt --enable-libssh --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libx264 --enable-libzmq --enable-libzvbi --enable-lv2 --enable-sdl2 --enable-libplacebo --enable-librav1e --enable-pocketsphinx --enable-librsvg --enable-libjxl --enable-shared

Here is also the info when successully playing back the stream from go2rtc (non-docker with my local ffmpeg)

Click to open

{
  "producers": [
    {
      "id": 4,
      "format_name": "rtsp",
      "protocol": "rtsp+tcp",
      "remote_addr": "127.0.0.1:57820 forwarded 192.168.20.69",
      "source": "exec:ffmpeg -hide_banner -v error -fflags nobuffer -flags low_delay -i http://ip/flv?port=1935\u0026app=bcs\u0026stream=channel0_main.bcs\u0026user=user\u0026password=password -c copy -user_agent ffmpeg/go2rtc -rtsp_transport tcp -f rtsp rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/60c48cec8e21161dc3c19c84d61961b7",
      "url": "http://ip/flv?port=1935\u0026app=bcs\u0026stream=channel0_main.bcs\u0026user=user\u0026password=password",
      "sdp": "v=0\r\no=- 0 0 IN IP4 127.0.0.1\r\ns=No Name\r\nc=IN IP4 127.0.0.1\r\nt=0 0\r\na=tool:libavformat 62.3.100\r\nm=video 0 RTP/AVP 96\r\na=rtpmap:96 H265/90000\r\na=fmtp:96 sprop-vps=QAEMAf//AWAAAAMAAAMAAAMAAAMAlqwJ; sprop-sps=QgEBAWAAAAMAAAMAAAMAAAMAlqAB4CACHH+JrTuiS7I=; sprop-pps=RAHAcvA7JA==\r\na=control:streamid=0\r\nm=audio 0 RTP/AVP 97\r\na=rtpmap:97 MPEG4-GENERIC/16000/1\r\na=fmtp:97 profile-level-id=1;mode=AAC-hbr;sizelength=13;indexlength=3;indexdeltalength=3; config=1408\r\na=control:streamid=1\r\n",
      "user_agent": "ffmpeg/go2rtc",
      "medias": [
        "video, recvonly, H265",
        "audio, recvonly, MPEG4-GENERIC/16000"
      ],
      "receivers": [
        {
          "id": 5,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "hevc",
            "codec_type": "video"
          },
          "childs": [
            8
          ],
          "bytes": 1562083,
          "packets": 1135
        },
        {
          "id": 6,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "aac",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "sample_rate": 16000
          },
          "childs": [
            9
          ],
          "bytes": 22619,
          "packets": 18
        }
      ],
      "bytes_recv": 1598594
    }
  ],
  "consumers": [
    {
      "id": 3,
      "format_name": "mse/fmp4",
      "protocol": "ws",
      "remote_addr": "[::1]:62492",
      "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/142.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
      "medias": [
        "video, sendonly, H264, H265",
        "audio, sendonly, MPEG4-GENERIC, PCMA, PCMU, L16, PCML, OPUS"
      ],
      "senders": [
        {
          "id": 8,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "hevc",
            "codec_type": "video"
          },
          "parent": 5,
          "bytes": 1562083,
          "packets": 1135
        },
        {
          "id": 9,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "aac",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "sample_rate": 16000
          },
          "parent": 6,
          "bytes": 22619,
          "packets": 18
        }
      ],
      "bytes_send": 1589437
    }
  ]
}

So I guess for now I should be able to work around this by using a different ffmpeg.
Any supported way of doing this, or should I build my own Frigate Docker image?
Or might this be something you'd want to officially implement, seeing as the currently shipped ffmpeg is seemingly missing critical functionality. (Not sure if an upstream fix from you makes it into Frigate though, I'd have to see if they ship their own ffmpeg)

Also a kinda off-topic question about using ffmpeg: vs not using it.
If I'm not transcoding, resizing, rotating, whatever, just using it without anything extra. Am I using significantly more CPU/GPU compute vs. if I don't have to use?

---

EDIT:
It seems I can provide custom ffmpeg to Frigate (as per docs). So this should hopefully work, I will try momentarily.

[0x464e]

Ok, using a newer ffmpeg with Frigate and go2rtc indeed worked.

For future readers (assuming this problem is not fixed upstream), what I did was

• Downloaded statically built ffmpeg from here
  I downloaded ffmpeg-n8.0-latest-linux64-gpl-8.0.tar.xz from the latest auto-build
• Provided the binaries to Frigate as per the documentation's instructions
• In Frigate config, instructed go2rtc to use this custom ffmpeg build as well (see the extract of my example config below)

Here are the relevant parts of my working Frigate config:

ffmpeg:
  hwaccel_args: preset-nvidia
  output_args: 
    record: preset-record-generic-audio-copy

go2rtc:
  streams:
    terrarium:
      - "ffmpeg:http://{FRIGATE_TERRARIUM_CAM_IP}/flv?port=1935&app=bcs&stream=channel0_main.bcs&user={FRIGATE_HTTP_USERNAME}&password={FRIGATE_HTTP_PASSWORD}"
    terrarium_sub:
      - "ffmpeg:http://{FRIGATE_TERRARIUM_CAM_IP}/flv?port=1935&app=bcs&stream=channel0_sub.bcs&user={FRIGATE_HTTP_USERNAME}&password={FRIGATE_HTTP_PASSWORD}"
  ffmpeg:
    bin: /config/custom-ffmpeg/bin/ffmpeg

cameras:
  terrarium:
    enabled: true
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/terrarium
          input_args: preset-rtsp-restream
          roles:
            - record
        - path: rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/terrarium_sub
          input_args: preset-rtsp-restream
          roles:
            - detect

I guess only thing that remains now, would be fixing go2rtc to be able to handle Reolink's HTTP-FLV H265 stream.
But at least can get the stream to work via ffmpeg this way. I just hope this isn't using a lot of extra compute.

[AlexxIT]

You can send me access to your camera in a PM.

Alpine still uses ffmpeg version 6:
https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=ffmpeg&branch=v3.22&repo=&arch=x86_64&origin=&flagged=&maintainer=

[0x464e]

You can send me access to your camera in a PM.

Ok, I will setup access to it through my cloudflare tunnel, I will PM you via Telegram after I've done it.

Alpine still uses ffmpeg version 6: https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=ffmpeg&branch=v3.22&repo=&arch=x86_64&origin=&flagged=&maintainer=

Lol, yeah. Well luckily we can always modify what is inside a container image by building our own image Also, maybe it's not necessarily just a thing with ffmpeg versions, since ffmpegcan be built with a lot of different "configuration options" enabled/disabled. I didn't look into what actually allowed the stream work in 8.0, could just be about a config option not being present.

[AlexxIT]

Support here
FFmpeg/FFmpeg@b76053d