HLS stream freeze after seeking video forward or backward

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hi guys.

I have issue and I don’t really know how to solve it. When I’m seeking my video forward or backward, video and audio freeze and time goes forward. But after sometimes, video reach to time and continue to play.

The point is, I’ve checked this video on HDS and HSS and nothing happened. I’ll just happen on HLS.

Here is a link that you can check by yourself: http://vayapanel.com:801/video/partialrender/cf658e24-937e-4150-80ef-867202a475da

Thanks a lot.

2

Here is another video longer than previous one: http://vayapanel.com:801/video/partialrender/941de7d5-f776-445f-86cd-b017a77a3416

Hope it’ll help.

3

Do you have this problem when playing a single file instead of the .smil? It might be a problem with switching, as I see you are doing ABR HLS streaming.

But it is not clear that you are actually doing HLS streaming. I don’t see the player downloading .ts chunks. I think you need the Enterprise or Premium version of JW Player to do HLS on the desktop.

Richard

4

How was the content encoded, what are the video encoding details? I wonder if there is a very long key frame interval. Take a look at this article on vod encoding

Richard

5

Do you still have that seekKeyFrameSearchWindow property in place? Try taking that out. Or try a brand new application. Is there any custom modules? If so, remove for the moment.

What device and iOS version are you testing with?

Richard

6

well I checked it single file and thats fine. guess you’re right. but the problem is not just freezing. scince I made the changes that Salvadore’s said, it gets worse. freezing problem somehow solved but it’ll move forward and backward and sometimes sound plays but picture freezes. Maybe you’re right and I have to purchase JW player.

7

Hi Richard,

I encoded whole content exactly the way Wowza community instructed with FFMPEG and command below:

ffmpeg -y -i Butterfly_HD_1080p.mp4 -s 320x180 -y -strict experimental -acodec aac -ab 64k -ac 2 -ar 48000 -vcodec libx264 -vprofile baseline -level 30 -g 48 -b 200000 -threads 64 butterflyiphone_320.mp4

but I still have the problem!

8

It could be that the key frame interval is to high. For seek to work, Wowza needs a key frame every 10 seconds. You can increase Wowza key frame tolerance by adding the following property to the MediaReader/Properties section in [install-dir]/conf/[application]/Application.xml. It looks like this:

<MediaReader>
	<Properties>
		<Property>
			<Name>seekKeyFrameSearchWindow</Name>
			<Value>40000</Value>
			<Type>Integer</Type>
		</Property>
	</Properties>
</MediaReader>

Another suggestion is to try adding seekTarget Property to the Application.xml /Streams /Properties list set to “enhanced”:

<Property>
<Name>seekTarget</Name>
<!-- valid values are: videoKeyFrame, audio, enhanced. DEFAULT = videoKeyFrame -->
<Value>enhanced</Value>
</Property>

What is the key frame interval? And video and audio codec?

If you determine you need to re-encode the files you can use this guide:

How to encode video on demand content

Salvadore

9

We have the same problem, seeking forward (to the end of the video), and then back to the beginning of the stream will result in playback freeze. No server or client errors

Configuration is - VOD wowza server application - windows, wowza player with HLS - chrome.

Key frame interval of 0.5 seconds. One change from default values - /Root/Application/HTTPStreamer cupertinoChunkDurationTarget is set to 1000 (so seek would jump with one second precision).

No custom modules.

Problem is encountered in both version 1.1.12 build 8600 and 1.1.11 build 5235

Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks.