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I have an unknown Chinese brand IP camera and I need to determine its streaming (most likely RTSP) URL.

Accessing the camera's IP address through a browser loads a web page including the settings and a non-working stream (because it needs Flash player and using Ruffle emulator doesn't work with it). Using Hikvision IVMS-4200 Client, I can access the camera stream and it works well. I only need to provide IVMS-4200 with the IP address and credentials of the camera, no other information is required to get it working.

Fiddling around the webpage of the camera using Chrome's dev tools I found a request which was something like "Get streaming URL", and its response had an RTSP URL. I tried that RTSP URL in VLC player but couldn't play it. This is why I think the camera uses RTSP for video streaming, which is not uncommon (it also has network settings for RTSP).

I figured that I could somehow use Wireshark to capture the traffic when IVMS is running, and in this traffic, I can find the streaming URL.

Most of what I found online included the following steps:

  1. Start capturing using Wireshark
  2. Start the stream
  3. Stop capturing
  4. Filter the packets by rtsp or rtp filter
  5. Look in the first few packets for the URL

Unfortunately, filtering for RTSP or RTP yields 0 packets. Maybe the stream is not in RTSP after all? I also tried filtering for HTTP but couldn't find anything indicating the transfer of images. I would love to know possible ways I can use to successfully determine the streaming URL of the camera.

Additional Notes

  • I need the URL of the stream despite it working on IVMS because we are developing a GUI that needs to play the stream.
  • Contacting the supplier, unfortunately, yielded nothing useful.
  • The camera itself is not a Hikvision brand camera.
  • I am not 100% sure that it uses RTSP, but from what I found it is the most likely candidate (what else could it use other than HTTP?).

Summary of what I know

  • The camera stream is working in IVMS-4200 client software.
  • The stream in the camera webpage is based on Flash player (ActionScript 3) and is not working.
Giacomo1968
  • 58,727
Mohamed Atef
  • 59

2 Answers2

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I'm using Camlytics (https://camlytics.com/) to find Camera streaming url, you only need to add camera manually and type camera brand name and the software will find all the available url for you (red mean wrong url, green is correct). They had hundred camera brand name.

Nguyễn Huy
  • 21
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This may not be a universal answer to the question, but in this specific case, it worked.

I downloaded ONVIF device manager from source forge: ONVIF Device Manager.

This program searches for IP cameras on the network and provides details related to them, one of which is the stream URL.

Here is a video I found demonstrating the steps: How to find RTSP URL of IP camera (Though, I didn't download the program from the link given in the description of the video as the website seemed shady).

Not sure if this would work with all types of IP cameras or not, but in my case (and apparently many others online), it did work.

Mohamed Atef
  • 59