How to quickly publish an RTSP stream from a webcam on Ubuntu

I wanted to quickly publish an RTSP video stream from a webcam on Linux without having to work with the complexity of sources and layers in OBS Studio. I found this neat software RtspSimpleServer downloadable from https://github.com/aler9/rtsp-simple-server. 

 For my testing purposes using just the default parameters, I did the following:

Install and run RtspSimpleServer

1. Using a browser, download and extract the RtspSimpleServer binary from the github repo https://github.com/aler9/rtsp-simple-server into a folder, e.g. /path/to/rtsp/
   
   The files rtsp-simple-server and the rtsp-simple-server.yml are extracted out into a directory /path/to/rtsp/.
   
   
2. Open up a Terminal. At the prompt, type in the cd command to change to the directory of the rtsp-simple-server.
   
   $ cd /path/to/rtsp/
   
   
3. At the prompt, run the rtsp-simple-server server:
   
   $ ./rtsp-simple-server
   
   Process messages appear to show the server is running.
   
   
   
   

Publish a video stream

1. Optional. If the video for linux utils are not installed, then run the apt command to install it.
   
   $ sudo apt install v4l-utils
   
   
2. Open up a new Terminal. Type in the ffmpeg command to publish the stream from the webcam device (assuming /dev/video0).
   
   $ ffmpeg \
   -f v4l2 \
   -framerate 90 \
   -re -stream_loop -1 \
   -video_size 640x320 \
   -input_format mjpeg \
   -i /dev/video0 \
   -c copy \
   -f rtsp \
   rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream
   
   
   
   Processing messages appear.
   
   
    

Open the stream with a VLC client

1. Open up a new Terminal.
   
    
2. Run the vlc command to open the published stream.
   
   $ vlc rtsp://localhost:8554/mystream
   
   
   
   The VLC client pops up to show the RTSP stream from the webcam.