In this article we will discuss the procedure to test if a Dvr or Nvr supports RTSP streaming by making use of the Onvif Device Manager Tool.
The following information is required to test if RTSP is supported.
The ODM Tool will also show you which profiles are available and the profiles rtsp url.
Download Link to ODM Tool :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/onvifdm/
After successfully downloading and installing the ODM Tool.
Please double click on the new ODM Icon on your desktop or search your start menu for ODM.
When opening ODM for the first time, you will be prompted to enter a username and password.
This is the Username and Password for the Device that you would like to test / inspect.
Login ONVIF Device Manager:
Enter the username and password and click Login.
This will store the device's credentials in cache so as to login to the device when need be.
You will also notice that you may see some device's listed in the left hand panel.
These are device's that were automatically detected on your local network.
To log into a device, click on the device in the left hand menu and the right hand side will populate with the device info and configuration.
In some cases the device's are not detected automatically, in those cases, we can add the device manually by clicking on the Add button.
After clicking the Add Button, an Add device dialogue will appear. edit the IP Address portion of the URL that is presented.
in this case , we replace the 192.168.0.1 with the IP Address of the device we would like to connect to.
Once this step is complete, the newly added device will appear in the left hand side menu.
Click on the Device to connect and inspect.
Upon successful connection, you will see something similar to the above image in your ODM.
Step 1 in Validating if your device supports Multiple stream, click on the Profiles Link.
In the above illustration we can observe that the device does in fact support Multiple streams, Namely a
mainStream and a subStream.
To check the RTSP Url for these streams, Click on the Stream that you would like to inspect.
Then Click on the Live video link.
The bottom Status bar shows the RTSP url for the selected stream, in this case we selected the main stream.
The Main stream RTSP Url is :
rtsp://192.168.10.44:554/Streaming/Channels/101?transportmode=unicast&profile=Profile_1
and if we select the subStream profile and click on Live Video , we get the following URL
rtsp://192.168.10.44:554/Streaming/Channels/102?transportmode=unicast&profile=Profile_2
These URLS do not show the authentication that is taking place in the background.
To make sure that the rtsp stream is authenticated, please ensure to add the username and password in the Rtsp url.
ie.
Assuming the username is admin and the password is pass123.
The url
rtsp://192.168.10.44:554/Streaming/Channels/101?transportmode=unicast&profile=Profile_1
will become
rtsp://admin:pass123@192.168.10.44:554/Streaming/Channels/101?transportmode=unicast&profile=Profile_1
Just to reiterate, authentication is added to an RTSP url by including
username:password@
between the rtsp:// and the IP address.
This is another reason why making use of special characters in a camera | dvr | nvr can cause an issue, as the rtsp url may be interpreted incorrectly.
IMPORTANT NOTE :
when switching between stream profiles, make sure to click on the select button after highlighting the required stream.