[MPlayer-users] MPlayer not playing HTTP video stream for one specific content from the same source

[Joel Ng]

Hello,

I am currently using MPlayer to play a video stream from a HTTP source. 
This HTTP source is created on my own. It is a video capture stream from 
a video game. I basically capture the video, encode it into a video, 
then stream it out as HTTP via FFmpeg.

MPlayer works for most of the games I have tried, but in one specific 
situation*, MPlayer is not able to display anything. It manages to 
connect, but then it gets stuck here indefinitely:

"libavformat version 57.72.101 (internal)
Stream not seekable!
H264-ES file format detected"

*This specific situation is if I launch the game to the main menu, it 
fails to play the video. If I skip the main menu and launch directly 
into the game level, it works. If I use another game, it also works.

I have tried using ffplay, as well as outputting the video locally. They 
both work fine. MPlayer also manages to play the locally output video. 
It just refuses to play the HTTP stream.

The MPlayer command I am using is this:
mplayer -quiet -vo gl -nosound -benchmark http://address:port

I have tried many other commands as well, none of them worked:
mplayer http://address:port
mplayer -fps 30 -vo gl -nosound -benchmark http://address:port
mplayer -fps 30 -screenw 720 -screenh 1280 -vo gl -nosound -benchmark 
http://address:port
mplayer -fps 30 -vo directx -nosound -benchmark http://address:port
mplayer -fps 30 -vo null -nosound -benchmark http://address:port

One more strange quirk is that MPlayer does succeed in playing the video 
in very rare occasions. I would place the chances of succeeding at about 
once every 15-20 tries.

This is extremely strange, so I am wondering if anyone has an idea why 
this happens.