Sapsan¶

Flussonic Sapsan (hereafter Sapsan) is a streaming media server. It ingests live video over industry-standard protocols, processes it (transcoding, multibitrate assembly, screenshots), records it into its own on-disk archive (DVR), and delivers it to viewers both live and from the archive.

Purpose: ingesting, processing, recording, and delivering live video in internet streaming, IPTV, and video surveillance projects. The detailed function list is on the functional characteristics page; the system design is on the technical architecture page.

Sapsan is driven by a single configuration file sapsan.yaml, reloads it on the fly without interrupting streaming, and can run either standalone or under control of an external management system (Flussonic Central).

Key features¶

• Ingest: RTSP (IP cameras), MPEG-TS (UDP and HTTP), SRT, RTMP, a channel from a file, synthetic test source.
• Publishing: RTMP publish, SRT publish, WebRTC WHIP.
• Ingest failover: multiple sources per stream with automatic switching (LSI), a fallback file.
• Transcoding: multibitrate (MBR) ladder preparation based on FFmpeg — h264/hevc/av1, aac/opus.
• Playback: HLS and LL-HLS (fMP4), DASH, MPEG-TS over HTTP (including CBR), SRT, RTSP, WebRTC WHEP.
• Restreaming: pushing a stream over RTMP, SRT, and UDP (multicast/unicast).
• DVR: append-only multi-disk archive, archive playback, rewind, frame previews, seamless playback of archives from other servers (remotes).
• Screenshots: JPEG previews of live streams and the archive.
• Authorization: play and publish tokens, external auth backends.
• ONVIF: camera discovery on the network, motion and detection events.
• Management: Admin API, external configuration (config_external), hot reload on SIGHUP, compatibility with Flussonic URLs and API.
• Peeklio gateway (rproxy): access to cameras and devices behind NAT via agents.
• Observability: structured logs, Prometheus metrics, OpenTelemetry traces, ingest quality counters.

Quick start¶

• Install and run Sapsan
• Configure your first stream
• Play the stream over HLS

Documentation navigator¶

This documentation will help you:

• Install and run Sapsan
• Understand the configuration
• Ingest video:
  • from an IP camera over RTSP
  • from multicast or HTTP MPEG-TS
  • over SRT
  • over RTMP
  • make a channel from a file
  • run a test stream
  • accept RTMP/SRT/WHIP publishing
• Set up backup sources
• Assemble a multibitrate stream from several sources
• Discover ONVIF cameras and receive their events
• Transcode a stream
• Deliver video to viewers:
  • HLS and LL-HLS
  • DASH
  • MPEG-TS
  • SRT
  • RTSP
  • WebRTC
• Restream to other servers
• Record the archive and play it back
• Seamlessly play an archive from another server
• Get stream screenshots
• Protect playback and publishing
• Operate the server:
  • Admin API
  • External configuration management
  • Peeklio gateway and agents
  • Monitoring, logs and traces
  • Licensing
  • Flussonic compatibility