Wowza Community

Live Video Stream Randomly Stops Playing

Having a problem that admittedly is going to probably be hard to chase down. It’s intermittent and I can’t reproduce it but it is causing major issues. We have hundreds of various H.264 source streams originating from the in browser Flash player coming into various 3.6.x or 4.x Wowza servers. The streams are also viewed by the in browser Flash player. Sometimes the video stream just stops playing on the viewing side. I cannot determine any common thread as there are various camera sources, browsers, etc. It doesn’t happen to everyone and it doesn’t happen to the same source stream all the time.

I have motion detection going at the source to see if there is video movement (which there is). And I am checking the bytes to see data is heading to the server from the source. On the viewing side, I am checking the buffer and NetStreamInfo and I am getting data coming from the server and the video bytes/sec and video byte count shows changing values each time I poll it every few seconds. So I am getting data to the player, but no video.

Is there anything in particular to look at or has anyone seen anything similar? I’m already doing some things to try to restart the stream at the source if a detect a problem, but at this point all the stats and things I can think of to monitor make it look like the stream is good, even though the video/audio stops or won’t play.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Hello there.

Are you seeing any indication as to the issue in the logs?

Are the Java versions the same across the multiple Wowza servers?

If you are implementing a Live Stream Repeater configuration you will need to use the same version of Wowza on all origin-edge servers. This might be a good thing to do regardless.

If you continue to have this problem, I would suggest opening a ticket with the support team. To do so please zip up the following folders and send them, along with a link to this thread for reference to support@wowza.com:

[install-dir]/conf

[install-dir]/logs

[install-dir]/transcoder

[install-dir]/manager/logs

Kind regards,

Salvadore

Don’t see anything in the logs. Running version 4.0.6 and 3.6.2 and it happens on both versions. I’m not running a repeater. Setup is pretty vanilla. I am running the cupertinostreaming packetizer. When the stream “freezes” or I lose video - it happens on both streams which indicates it is something from the time it leaves the source (or at the source) until the time the server sends the stream out.

Anything in particular you can think of to troubleshoot? Is it possible the video data coming out of the server all of the sudden becomes something that cannot be decoded into a viewable video stream?

Yes the sources are coming from various clients using different browsers with the Flash player as the source. The source video is H.264, the audio is Speex. I am transcoding the stream (audio only) to AAC for iOS. People are viewing those streams using either the browser with the Flash player to view the original stream or iOS clients are viewing the transcoded stream. Again the issue appears somewhere between the source generating the stream and the server delivering it. As far as it looks at the source end, the displayobject in the flash player that has the camera feed attached to it shows the camera video working. The source never realizes there is an issue because they see their local cam feed working fine, but the clients viewing the stream (both the desktop and iOS) all of the sudden will have bytes apparently coming from the server, but never renders any more video.

I hope that makes it a little more clear.

I am sorry but I am not sure I fully understand your set up.

I thought the source was coming from a Flash application with clients using a Flash player?

What is the source of the stream? What are the video and audio codecs? I see you said the video is h.264, but what is the audio?

Are iOS clients also connecting to the stream? iOS clients do not support Speex or NellyMoser audio. iOS requires h.264 video and AAC or mp3 audio.

I am sorry for the inconvenience this is causing. If what I have said in this last reply is not relevant to your situation, please see my first reply with the process of opening a support ticket.

Kind regards,

Salvadore