Question

I’m trying to achive an overlay with ffmpeg wich take the overlay source from a “remote” video encoder.

Just for the sake of testing i’m using random online video source.

As you will notice in the code below the source and the overlay are the same. That’s not the problem.

The command i’m using at the moment is the following:

ffmpeg -f mjpeg -i http://81.20.148.158/anony/mjpg.cgi  -vf "movie=http://81.20.148.158/anony/mjpg.cgi [mv]; [in][mv] overlay=0:0" output.avi

Here an easy-to-read version:

ffmpeg 
-f mjpeg
-i http://81.20.148.158/anony/mjpg.cgi  
-vf "movie=http://81.20.148.158/anony/mjpg.cgi [mv]; [in][mv] overlay=0:0" 
output.avi

I’m getting this error:

Missing key or no key/value separator found after key '//81.20.148.158/anony/mjpg.cgi'

It works pretty well if i use a “local” video source such as

ffmpeg 
-f mjpeg
-i http://81.20.148.158/anony/mjpg.cgi  
-vf "movie=a.flv [mv]; [in][mv] overlay=0:0" 
output.avi

I have the feeling something is wrong with the double slashes // or more likely with the : in http://…

Thanks,
Francesco.

Answer 1

You’re right to suspect the unusual characters. It appears that FFmpeg is attempting to parse //81.20.148.158/... as the value of the key http passed to the movie filter because key:value is the format filters use for their parameters.

The solution is more quoting. Change your movie filter line to:

-vf "movie='http://81.20.148.158/anony/mjpg.cgi' [mv]; [in][mv] overlay=0:0"

and that should fix it.