I believe that I have a timing issue for certain streams

Hello,

Hoping I can get some help/advice.

I'm trying to stream three streams to my PS3 over wireless from my Ubuntu 12.04 machine.

1-Skynews. mmsh://live1.wm.skynews.servecast.net/s ... z_live300k
2-BFM. mmsh://vipmms9.yacast.net/bfm_bfmtv
3-France24. mmsh://stream1.france24.yacast.net/f24_livefr

I recompiled ffmpeg as described in the wiki and I believe it works well.

ffmpeg gives the following for the stream types:

Skynews
Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (wmav2 -> ac3)
Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (wmv3 -> mpeg2video)
BFM
Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (vc1 -> mpeg2video)
Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (wmapro -> ac3)
France24
Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (vc1 -> mpeg2video)
Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (wmapro -> ac3)

Skynews streams great and when I do "Check stream URL", it comes back positive.
BFM comes back positive when I do "Check stream URL" and streams sometimes. USUALLY, it comes back with DNLA error 80710723, but occasionally it will stream, and when it does, it works great.
France24 comes back negative for "Check stream URL" and doesn't show up on the PS3.

If I run the command:
"ffmpeg -i mmsh://[input_stream] -y -threads 1 -copyts -c:v mpeg2video -q:v 3 -r 25 -g 15 -c:a ac3 -b:a 48k -ac 2 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -sn -f vob outputfile"
Then they all work. They all produce an output file with good video and audio, so I think that the streams are all valid and ffmpeg can transcode them correctly. What's strange is how long the ffmpeg commands take to start writing the file. The ffmpeg with the Skynews stream starts writing the output file in around 15 seconds. BFM takes around 1 minute and France24 doesn't start writing for ~90-100 seconds. So I could be wrong, but my guess is that the BFM and France24 time out at various points. The BFM stream comes back fast enough that I can add the stream in Serviio and occasionally get the stream going, but it usually times out on the PS3 side. I think the France24 stream is too slow for Serviio to even add it.

If anyone has any suggestions (parameter changes or other) on how I can speed up the stream on the Ubuntu side, I'd appreciate it (or if you think you recognize another problem in the description above).

Thanks.

[zip]

Live streams do not store any local file and Serviio just acts as a proxy. So if FFmpeg doesn't produce any data for 1 minute, Serviio won't send any to the TV. If the TV then times out, not much that can be done. When it fails, does it fail immediately or after a (constant) time delay?

Hello Mr. Zip. Thanks for the reply. Seems like it consisently times out on the PS3 side after 30-35 seconds, so I've got to either find a way to keep that connection alive longer on the PS3 side or speed things up on the ffmpeg side. May not be possible, but I'm going to do a bit of googling.

[grolschie]

This is probably the wrong place for a feature request Zip, but how about the idea of Serviio sending through blank video/audio chunks to the renderer while it is waiting to receive the stream? This might help solve such time-out issues? There could be two tiny local files, one audio and one video, that Serviio could transcode and send through, repeatedly if necessary, until the stream starts?

In fact, the video file could perhaps be a Serviio logo?

[zip]

That would totally screw up the duration of the file and some renderers might decide to cut the video prematurely.

[grolschie]

Ok, thanks. But for live streams there is no file length though, right?

[zip]

you're right

[grolschie]

The reason for my interest in this, is that I wonder if it will help the Xbox issues I've been having.