Integrations:

Local RTSP Video Integration

This documentation is designed to guide third-party video integrations and custom in-house development teams through the implementation of the Envysion Local RTSP Integration. This integration allows third-party and custom in-house application to consume video directly from an EnVR over a Local Area Network (LAN) without transcoding overhead.

Overview

The Local RTSP Integration provides a low-latency, raw video feed from the Envysion Network Video Recorder (EnVR) directly to a local receiving hardware/appliance (e.g., analytics engine). By bypassing the transcoding process, the EnVR delivers video in its native format. This ensures the Envysion system performs as expected even with multiple concurrent local feeds, while providing the receiving hardware/appliance with high image quality for processing.

Connectivity Requirements

This integration is local-only. To pull a feed, the receiving hardware/appliance must meet the following networking criteria:

• Physical connection: The receiving hardware/appliance must be on the same LAN as the EnVR.
• Protocol: Use Interleaved RTSP (RTP over TCP). This ensures video data and control commands are sent over the same connection, which is more reliable in typical store network environments.

Authentication via RTSP URLs

Security is managed via authenticated RTSP URLs. The third-party application will ingest a fully-formed URL provided by the customer. The customer will generate those URLs directly from within their Envysion Web App, and will provide the appropriate URLs. 

• Each URL contains a built-in security token.
• The URL acts as a permanent key, allowing the partner appliance to reconnect automatically after power cycles or network interruptions without requiring manual re-authentication.

Technical Specifications

Because this is a non-transcoded feed, the receiving hardware/appliance must be prepared to handle the video in its native state:

• Codecs: Feeds are typically delivered in H.264, depending on the camera’s capabilities and the management profile assigned by the EnVR. The third-party or custom in-house application must have the appropriate decoders to handle these standard compression formats.
• Resolution/Frame rate: The feed attributes (resolution, FPS, and bitrate) are dictated by the EnVR’s active management of the camera. For example, if the EnVR is configured to record a channel at 5fps to optimize storage, the local RTSP feed will deliver exactly that.
• Metadata: The EnVR recreates the appropriate RTSP metadata packets to ensure the stream is readable by standard RTSP-compliant media players and integration frameworks.

Best Practices

• Error handling: Implement retry logic. If the LAN connection drops, the appliance should attempt to reconnect using the same URL/Token.
• Network stability: Since raw video consumes significant local bandwidth, ensure the store’s internal switch infrastructure can handle the throughput of multiple concurrent feeds.
• Testing: During development, use a standard tool like VLC Media Player to verify the RTSP URL is valid before attempting to ingest the feed into your custom application.

Note: This documentation covers local LAN support only. Accessing these feeds over the internet or via HTTP is not supported under the standard local integration profile.