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Bug Identified: G711_ALAW & H264

If you are running an older IP camera that uses G711_ALAW or G711_U in combination with H264 the transcoder is unable the stream to allow it to work in web based players. Attempt to report this to developers or researching but there appears to not be any clear documentation on this. But the transcoder throws an error preventing decoding. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed in future versions but ultimately is why we chose not to use this platform.

@Jeremy Hewit, were you using the Wowza Transcoder to convert the audio from G711 to a compatible format? Obviously G.711 won’t play directly in web-based players and needs transcoding. But do I understand that the transcoder refused to convert G.711 to AAC?

See: https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-transcode-only-the-audio-channel-of-an-incoming-stream

That is correct the transcoder refused to convert G.711 to AAC it was flagging errors. It flagged invalid combination of h264 with G711_ALAW and when attempted with G711_U it did the samething. We also attempted it with h265 which also did not work. Basically because of the video codec it was paired with it was incapable of decoding was the error.

What prompted us to delve into the logs was that the video would play in VLC without issue. But when the video was attempted to be viewed in browsers it was failing on all known standard players including the built-in, JWPlayer, and many others. JWPlayer flagged it as a codec issue. Which then led to the discovery of the issues with the transcoder.