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The go2rtc model

Crumb embeds its own copy of go2rtc, a restreamer, inside the recorder process rather than running it as a separate container. The recorder process spawns and supervises it directly.

Why a restreamer at all​

Without one, every consumer of a camera, recording, live view in the web console, a desktop client, a phone, would each open its own RTSP session directly to the camera. Most cameras support only a handful of concurrent sessions before they start refusing connections. go2rtc sits in the middle: one session to the camera, fanned out to as many consumers as actually need it.

This is also why, if you run Frigate alongside Crumb, Frigate should consume Crumb's streams rather than dialing the cameras a second time; see Using Frigate with Crumb.

Streams are managed at runtime, never hand-edited​

The committed go2rtc/go2rtc.yaml in the repository holds only listener configuration, which ports to bind, not which cameras exist. The actual list of streams is owned entirely by the admin console: adding a camera in the console writes it to the database and the API's reconcile loop pushes that into go2rtc's own API at runtime. Removing or editing a camera works the same way in reverse.

This means the source of truth for what Crumb records is always the cameras table, never a YAML file, and the reconcile loop periodically double-checks that go2rtc's actual state matches what the database says it should be, correcting drift without operator involvement.

Not directly reachable​

go2rtc's own REST API is not published to your LAN. Only the API container can reach it, over Crumb's internal Docker network, authenticated with credentials generated at setup. This closes off a surface that would otherwise let anyone on the network enumerate or tamper with camera streams directly, bypassing Crumb's own user roles and per-camera access grants.

RTSP itself (the actual video, not the management API) is published to your LAN so native clients can connect, with its own authentication layered on top; see Server settings for setting the address clients use to reach it.