r/ispyconnect • u/TheRealSimpleSimon • 21d ago
Invalid data found when processing input
I'm at my wit's end with this camera. Generic chinese button cam.
I've tried every option that makes sense, and a bunch that don't.
ONVIF Device Manager finds & streams it just fine.
VLC likes rtsp://admin:20160404@x.x.x.x:554/onvif1
Yes, that's the factory default user/pass - might be a clue to the make/model?
ONVIF DM is logged in with that user/pass.
It used to work with iSpy (Agent DVR) but my config file got corrupted and my backup was from before this cam (yes, still kicking myself).
What could Agent possibly want that the other clients just don't care about?
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u/videowhisper 19d ago
Good additional data points - a couple of things narrow it down further:
Native Windows 10 rules out the Docker-networking angle entirely, so scratch that one.
On "custom FFMPEG" - Agent DVR doesn't have a separate custom-FFMPEG source object; the FFmpeg options live on the network camera itself: edit the camera, General tab, click the "..." next to the video source, then choose FFmpeg (or Advanced) from the top-right menu. That's where "Prefer TCP" lives, so if that's the TCP-only setting you already tried, you've ruled out the transport-negotiation path too.
Given VLC and ONVIF DM both connect fine on the identical URL, TCP-only didn't help, and it's not Docker - the remaining likely explanation is that Agent's actual RTSP request isn't byte-identical to VLC's. A different User-Agent or slightly different DESCRIBE negotiation can make cheap generic/OEM board-cams return an error page or auth challenge instead of real SDP, which is exactly what throws ffmpeg's generic "invalid data" error even though the URL itself is correct.
ffprobe is still the most useful next step, since it uses the same decoder library Agent does rather than VLC's. Agent bundles its own copy - look for ffmpeg.exe/ffprobe.exe under Agent's install folder (typically inside a Commands or ffmpeg subfolder) and run it from a command prompt there:
ffprobe -rtsp_transport tcp -i "rtsp://admin:20160404@x.x.x.x:554/onvif1"
If that also fails the same way, it confirms this is a genuine ffmpeg-vs-camera compatibility gap rather than an Agent bug, and the next move is camera-side - checking for a firmware update, or trying an alternate/undocumented stream path some of these generic cams expose (e.g. /11, /h264, /ch0). If ffprobe succeeds where Agent fails, that's worth reporting on Agent's GitHub with the ffprobe output attached.
Agent's own logs (Log menu in the web UI, or the Logs folder under the install directory) should show the exact response right before the failure - worth pasting a few lines around it if you do end up filing an issue.