[Ffmpeg-devel] Problem with ffserver. Stream stops almost immediately.

[Bryan Mayland]

Pranav Desai wrote:
> You are right ... the client is terminating the connection .. here is the
> last few pkts of the dump.
>
> How would i use the frame rate of 29.97 ... mpeg2video and mpeg1video doesnt
> seem to like that. I also tried frame rate of 30 ...with same result.
>   
    Yeah I looked at the code and there really isn't a way to specify 
29.97 fps.  What we're trying to get is 30,000/1001 fps, but the conf 
loader sets the frame rate to 2999997/100100 fps. 

    However, I can reproduce this same problem by enabling audio.  The 
pts gets all out of whack.  If you add NoAudio option to your stream it 
should work around.  I'll figure out what the problem is and fix it when 
I have the time.

    Then you'll hit the next problem I'm facing, which is that the 
stream runs "balls-to-the-wall".  That is, ffserver  sends data as fast 
as it can to the client and the client displays it at whatever frame 
rate your network connection can support.  I'm trying to locate where 
this problem is exactly and whose responsibility is to play things at 
the proper frame rate.  I would have *thought* that the player would 
check the pts info of the stream and present things at the proper 
timestamp (otherwise, why have a pts?) and only suck up as much 
bandwidth as required. 

    I've also noticed that the feed generator (ffmpeg outputting to 
.ffm) runs as fast as possible too.  That seems fundamentally wrong 
because if it encodes faster than real time, it will eventually wrap the 
.ffm file and start overwriting areas clients are still streaming from 
(assuming the clients are playing in real time). 

    Is the ffm muxer only supposed to run real-time?  I can't see any 
code in it directly which throttles its output.