Video stopped working

[tessellated]

Maybe a too complex password, compare settings:
View attachment 76978
Network --> Access Platform -> ONVIF -> Authentification = "On"
System --> Account -> Onvif User --> check user & pass
System --> Safety -> System Service -> ONVIF = "Enable"

Yes, I did avoid annoying problems with password URL-encoding. Always a good call out though.

 

[tessellated]

Make sure that the user/pw you are using shows up under ONVIF account too in the system tab. Most do not see that, but if you are using anything other than the initial set-up of the camera, the current user/pw might not be in there. I learned that one the hard way spending hours trying to figure out why something wasn't working! Also, do not use the @ in a passwords as many of these platforms use that to pass on info.

Yep...I did stumble upon the ONVIF user directory. Good advice on avoiding the @ symbol in your password as it is a delimiter in the URL.

 

[tessellated]

So, as I alluded to earlier today, I quickly stumbled upon a working combination of config settings right after I posted for help here. Funny how things work that way!

Hopefully someone else someday finds this useful. In my testing, I have found that:

• VLC does not care if the stream encoding is H.264 or H.265
• Bitrates of 4096 or less don't seem to be a hard requirement, but I did see a little instability at higher bitrates. I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue reliably.
• ONVIF authentication is not required to stream to VLC. That said, enabling ONVIF authentication works, but as has been suggested, you need to take into account that there are two different user directories. So, if you want to avoid prompts for credentials, make sure that you have the same username/password in both directories.
• Enabling “RTSP over TLS” gives me problems. I haven't yet found a way to stream to VLC with this setting enabled.

Follow up questions for those here with much more knowledge than myself:

• What is the value of ONVIF in this context? It seems zero as I simply want to consume a stream from the camera in VLC? How is enabling ONVIF authentication beneficial?
• The GUI for managing ONVIF users implies complexity that isn’t surfaced. For example there are groups, but I don’t see management of those groups exposed or even some indication of the permissions associated with those groups. How or where do I access that?
• I don’t think I fully understand what the “RTSP over TLS” setting does…other than prevent VLC from opening the stream! If I had to guess, it allows for encryption of the stream. Is this just something that VLC is incapable of dealing with or is there further configuration I need to do besides ticking the checkbox?