ffmpeg WebDAV uploading
A question came in on IRC about getting ffmpeg to upload to WebDAV. Since I have been messing with ffmpeg and have a WebDAV server running, I thought I’d figure it out.
There are a few different methods:
Mount WebDAV and write to filesystem
Use ffmpeg http support directly
Use ffmpeg pipe to output stream and then use curl/wget to upload
The solution accepted, in chat, was to use ffmpeg http support directly. However, my initial attempts at this failed because I was not using the correct HTTP method. Additionally, there are some weird things about ffmpeg and https.
This was my default answer:
Command would be:
mount ... path/to/folder
ffmpeg inputs ... -f format path/to/folder/filename
According to the user the remote mount will lag and corrupt the video. A bit surprising, but it could make sense since any temporary writing errors from ffmpeg are probably going to be ignored.
I initial fought with option 3, below, looking at ffmpegs http support. There is this option:
method
When used as a client option it sets the HTTP method for the request.
Which means we can now support a WebDAV style PUT.
We can change this to a single command:
ffmepg inputs ... -method PUT -f format https://.../webdav/filename
This is supposed to work, but my WebDAV server has a non-valid TLS cert (there are no external connections to this server). There does not seem to be any options for SSL/TLS in ffmpegs http support (that I’ve seen). For my own uses I think I have to use another method.
Any errors with the HTTP endoint with this method seem to be completely masked with the default logging. Even with an invalid password we seem get a 100 OK from WebDAV, but I think that is due to the user agent or an initial non-PUT method?
ffmpeg allows you to use a pipe as an output:
ffmpeg inputs ... -f format pipe:1 # 1 for stdout
We can merge this with a curl command to upload to WebDAV:
curl --data-binary @- -X PUT https://.../webdav/filename
The full command is:
ffmpeg inputs ... -f format pipe:1 | curl --data-binary @- -X PUT https://.../webdav/filename
This seems to be the most robust solution as I have full control over my HTTPs request.
I’m seeing mixed answers about cookie support in WebDAV, so I have not included any examples for either ffmpeg or curl.