ffmpeg avcodec_send_packet fail after several frames

Question

I am trying to use ffmpeg to decode a video stream and convert to Opencv cv::Mat.

I found this piece of code and made it compiled. Howerver, the decoding process will always fail after several frames. The call to avcodec_send_packet return error code -11.

I do now know what the problem is. I am sure the video stream and my FFmpeg is ok. I can transcode the stream video using ffmpeg command line.

The error always happen on

error = avcodec_send_packet(videoCodecContext, &packet);

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

extern "C" {
#include <libavformat/avformat.h>
#include <libavutil/imgutils.h>
#include <libswscale/swscale.h>
#include <libavcodec/avcodec.h>
}


#include <opencv2/opencv.hpp>

// helper function to check for FFmpeg errors
inline void checkError(int error, const std::string& message) {
    if (error < 0) {
        //std::cerr << message << ": " << av_err2str(error) << std::endl;  //error C4576: a parenthesized type followed by an initializer list is a non-standard explicit type conv>
        std::cerr << message << ": " << std::to_string(error) << std::endl;
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
}

int main() {
    // initialize FFmpeg
    av_log_set_level(AV_LOG_ERROR);
    avformat_network_init();

    // open the input file
    std::string fileName = "rtsp://[email protected]:554//Streaming/Channels/101";
    AVFormatContext* formatContext = nullptr;
    int error = avformat_open_input(&formatContext, fileName.c_str(), nullptr, nullptr);
    checkError(error, "Error opening input file");

    //Read packets of a media file to get stream information.
    ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    error = avformat_find_stream_info(formatContext, nullptr);
    checkError(error, "Error avformat find stream info");
    ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


    // find the video stream
    AVStream* videoStream = nullptr;
    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < formatContext->nb_streams; i++) {
       if (formatContext->streams[i]->codecpar->codec_type == AVMEDIA_TYPE_VIDEO && !videoStream) {
            videoStream = formatContext->streams[i];
        }
    }
    if (!videoStream) {
        std::cerr << "Error: input file does not contain a video stream" << std::endl;
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    // create the video codec context
    const AVCodec* videoCodec = avcodec_find_decoder(videoStream->codecpar->codec_id);
    AVCodecContext* videoCodecContext = avcodec_alloc_context3(videoCodec);
    if (!videoCodecContext) {
        std::cerr << "Error allocating video codec context" << std::endl;
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
    error = avcodec_parameters_to_context(videoCodecContext, videoStream->codecpar);
    checkError(error, "Error setting video codec context parameters");
    error = avcodec_open2(videoCodecContext, videoCodec, nullptr);
    checkError(error, "Error opening video codec");

    // create the frame scaler
    int width = videoCodecContext->width;
    int height = videoCodecContext->height;

    std::cout<<"frame width:" << width << std::endl;
    std::cout<<"frame height:" << height << std::endl;
    std::cout<<"frame pix fmt:" << videoCodecContext->pix_fmt << std::endl;

    struct SwsContext* frameScaler = sws_getContext(width, height, videoCodecContext->pix_fmt, width, height, AV_PIX_FMT_BGR24, SWS_BICUBIC, nullptr, nullptr, nullptr);

    // read the packets and decode the video frames
    std::vector<cv::Mat> videoFrames;
    AVPacket packet;
    int i=0;
    while (av_read_frame(formatContext, &packet) == 0) {
            std::cout<<"frame number:"<< i++ <<std::endl;

            if (packet.stream_index == videoStream->index) {
            // decode the video frame
          AVFrame* frame = av_frame_alloc();
            int gotFrame = 0;
            error = avcodec_send_packet(videoCodecContext, &packet);
            checkError(error, "Error sending packet to video codec");
            if (error<0) {
                    continue;
            }
            error = avcodec_receive_frame(videoCodecContext, frame);

            //There is not enough data for decoding the frame, have to free and get more data
            ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
            if (error == AVERROR(EAGAIN))
            {
                av_frame_unref(frame);
                av_freep(frame);
                continue;
            }

            if (error == AVERROR_EOF)
            {
                std::cerr << "AVERROR_EOF" << std::endl;
                break;
            }
            ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

            checkError(error, "Error receiving frame from video codec");


            if (error == 0) {
                gotFrame = 1;
            }
            if (gotFrame) {
                // scale the frame to the desired format
                AVFrame* scaledFrame = av_frame_alloc();
                av_image_alloc(scaledFrame->data, scaledFrame->linesize, width, height, AV_PIX_FMT_BGR24, 32);
                sws_scale(frameScaler, frame->data, frame->linesize, 0, height, scaledFrame->data, scaledFrame->linesize);
             // copy the frame data to a cv::Mat object
                cv::Mat mat(height, width, CV_8UC3, scaledFrame->data[0], scaledFrame->linesize[0]);

                //Show mat image for testing
                ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
                //cv::imshow("mat", mat);
                //cv::waitKey(100);   //Wait 100msec (relativly long time - for testing).
                ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


                videoFrames.push_back(mat.clone());

                // clean up
                av_freep(&scaledFrame->data[0]);
                av_frame_free(&scaledFrame);
            }
            av_frame_free(&frame);
        }
        av_packet_unref(&packet);
    }

    // clean up
    sws_freeContext(frameScaler);
    avcodec_free_context(&videoCodecContext);
    avformat_close_input(&formatContext);

    return 0;
}