Using VLC with Wowza Pro (native RTP)

Wowza Streaming Engine
101

You have already followed the Live Stream Troubleshooting guide, and considered other encoders. I’m not sure what we can do. VLC is difficult. They also have a forum that might be able to help:

http://forum.videolan.org/

Richard

102

Could be a permissions problem, trying to write to that location.

Richard

103

The dst argument is the remote IP. The sdp argument can be the same, or whatever is appropriate on that server.

It is also possible to output the sdp locally, then copy it to the remote server, in case there is some problem making it work, possibly a write permission problem.

Richard

104

Pablo,

Sorry, I don’t understand. What are you doing?

Richard

105

Pablo,

If you are having trouble writing the sdp file to the Wowza content folder, try writing somewhere else, then copy the file to the content folder. For example:


vlc -vvv dshow:// :dshow-vdev="Integrated Webcam" :dshow-adev="Microphone Array (IDT High Defi" :dshow-size="320x240" --sout "#transcode{venc=x264{keyint=60},vcodec=x264,vb=500,scale=1,acodec=mp4a,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=48000}:rtp{dst=127.0.0.1,port-video=10000,port-audio=10002,sdp=file://c:/Temp//vlc.sdp}"

Note this part:

sdp=file://c:/Temp//vlc.sdp

Richard

106

Everything is in this guide:

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-use-vlc-as-a-live-stream-encoder-with-wowza-media-server-mpeg-ts)

So, just go through it again carefully. Be sure to use VLC 1.05 or 1.06, as noted. Keep playing with it. It definitely works.

Richard

107

Well, does that file exist?:

C:/Program Files (x86)/Wowza Media Systems/Wowza Media Server 2/content/vlc.sdp

Again, if you are having a problem with VLC writing the SDP file to the Wowza content folder, try another location. It can be any other place, it doesn’t matter where. I suggested c:\temp, as an example. Then copy that file to the Wowza content folder. See the example I showed above.

Richard

108

Pablo,

You have to change the dst value to the Wowza IP address.

dst=[wowza-address]

Then generate the sdp file locally, then move it to the Wowza machine in the content folder. Then start it in StreamManager.

Richard

109

You can if it works. That’s a question for your network admin really. I don’t know if it will work for you.

Richard

110

Make sure the .sdp file that VLC generates is actually in the Wowza content folder. You can write it to any location and copy it to the Wowza content folder if necessary. Then start a stream in Stream Manager with the name of that file, “test.sdp”

Or follow this guide to using mpeg-ts with VLC instead of the .sdp method

Running Wowza in stand-alone mode (/bin/startup.bat) and looking at access and error logs is helpful.

Richard

111

Looks like a problem with UDP ports. Try getting all UDP ports open ( 0-65535 )

Or add forceInterleaved Property set to true in the /conf/[app-name]/Application.xml /MediaCaster Properties container:

<Property>
	<Name>forceInterleaved</Name>
	<Value>true</Value>
	<Type>Boolean</Type>
</Property>

Richard

112

Sorry, scratch the forceInterleaved suggestion, that won’t work in this case (native RTP streaming, ingestion of a stream using an SDP file)

Richard

113

Do you still have DatagramPortSharing enabled in Server.xml? Try turning that off now. (Restart Wowza after changes to Server.xml)

Richard

114

You have to use different ports for different streams that are being streamed to the same IP.

Richard

115

Hello,

VLC streaming works with good quality, good job Wowza Team. However there is a delay issue :

There almost a two second overall delay between the VLC <–> flash player on the browser. On the machine that runs wowza, I also tried VLC as the “player” and the delay is almost 0. The flash video component has almost 0

buffer time and I use a dedicated Gigabit ethernet so no bandwith problem. My guess is that Wowza is doing some buffering on the server side.

I played with the parameters of “rtp-live-lowlatency” in the file “Streams.xml”

and decreased the values to :

flushInterval

25

Integer

behindDropDFrames

100

Integer

behindDropPFrames

200

Integer

behindDropKFrames

300

Integer

Though I do not have a clue what they are but an educated guess looking at

the “rtp-live” stream type. However it did not help.

I had almost no delay If I stream from a webcam through flashclient.

Any comments ?

116

Hi,

setting netstream.buffertime = 0 really helps the delay issue with vlc+rtp+h264 live streaming. As Charlie said setting it any value greater than 0 causes a buffering of 2-3 s in flash player

However with buffertime=0 the video look abit choppy, as if it drops frames time to time. My guess is either flash cannot render the video without some buffering or the wowza does not push the frames in real-time. Hence it look like a buffering of 0.3 seconds or so would do the work but impossible to set it between 0 and 1.

Is there a setting in Wowza that may alleviate the problem ?

Thanks alot

117

Hi,

I’m trying to set up a stream to Wowza through VLC. I was able to stream successfully to Wowza internally to ip 127.0.0.1 from our development server which worked perfectly. Now I’m trying to stream to our live Wowza server and I’m having some problems. I am sending the same stream as before to our live server, which is a remote server, and I seem to be getting a stream. However, it seems the audio is choppy and skipping with no video. I have taken the vlc.sdp file and put it on the remote (live) server and substituted the local IP for the remote Wowza IP. It’s the same stream but different result and I’m not sure why it’s not working. This is my vlc command string:

vlc -vvv mms://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/stream --sout “#transcode{venc=x264{keyint=60,profile=baseline,level=3.0,nocabac,qpmax=36,qpmin=10,me=hex,merange=24,subme=9,qcomp=0.6},vcodec=x264,vb=100,scale=1,acodec=mp4a,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=48000}:rtp{dst=[remote-wowza-ip],port-video=10000,port-audio=10002}”

I’m running wowza version 2.1.2

I’ve been at this for some time now trying to get this to work but I cannot find a thread on the forum that mentions anything like what I’m experiencing.

If it helps, I have a duration clock on my custom player and it is going very very fast, like the stream is going in fast forward but the audio is at normal speed (but choppy).

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

118

Thanks for the speedy response, but no luck. I am still getting the choppy audio with no video. I double and triple checked all my settings but I still can’t see anything. Any other advice? ~Thanks.

119

Yes I have and I’m pretty sure that’s not the problem. Both the computer I’m streaming from and the Wowza server both have a 1GB network connection.

120

I’m not sure I understand your question, but if I understand correctly I have been testing from 2 computers. The one with the 1g connection is directly connected to the Wowza server on the same rack at our hosting provider. That is our development server I mentioned before. The other computer is here in our office with vlc installed and sending a stream. I’m getting the same result with both computers, the choppy audio. I’ve tried with a static file and I’m getting the same problem. We are going to be using multiple sources to send a stream to the server using VLC so we can’t be stuck with one server as the source. I hope that answers your question. One new thing I have discovered is if I wait long enough the video does appear but only after about 15-30 min of choppy audio but all I am getting is video stills that changed every few minutes or so.