Issues with default installation (green screens)

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Dear community and / or Wowza staff,

We have been using Adobe FMS for streaming, nobody complained about the streaming. Now we are using Wowza streaming and we have a couple of people complaining about “green screens” when fast forwarding a stream. How do I troubleshoot this issue without returning to Adobe FMS? I need a fix fast, because these people are complaining :frowning:

Kind regards, John

2

Hi John,

Currently, trickplay (fast forward, fast rewind, slow motion) in Wowza, only works with VP6 or Spark based content in Adobe Flash.

You can use the FastPlayVideoStreaming package which includes support this functionality.

How to configure trickplay for Flash VP6 or Spark content

Salvadore

3

Okay, so you mean when seeking.

Can you explain your set up?

What is the key frame interval?

What are the video and audio codecs?

What players are experiencing this issue?

Is the issue only on a certain stream? or on multiple streams?

Is it pretty consistent or sporadic when this happens?

Are you doing adaptive bitrate streaming?

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>

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

How to encode video on demand content

Salvadore

4

That’s great! Thanks for the update and I am glad I could help.

Salvadore

5

Thanks for your reaction. However I don’t think they really use “fast forward, rewind”. What I meant was that they click further in the progress bar to zap to 1 minute for example. Does that make sense? :slight_smile:

6

Salvadore you are a genius! This fixed it:

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

Thank you very much!