[Live-devel] possible RFC3984 related VLC bug?

[Engin Kurutepe]

Dear all,

I have extended the on demand test server in the live555 distribution to 
handle H.264 streaming. I have first tested my server with VLC and then 
my own simple client written using live555 library and ffmpeg API.

VLC complains a lot, often fails to decode macroblocks and resorts to 
error concealment regularly. However the video is decoded and displayed, 
albeit with some artifacts. First I thought this might be due to an 
undiscovered bug in my server code. However, my own client which passes 
the received NAL units from the H264VideoRTPSource to the ffmpeg 
avcodec_decode_video() displays the H.264 stream perfectly with no 
ffmpeg error messages and without any error concealment.

I find this strange since VLC also uses live555 and ffmpeg to receive an 
H.264 stream. I am not familiar with VLC source and I tend to think this 
might be due to a small bug in the way VLC passes the received NAL unit 
to the ffmpeg decoder. I would like to ask to those in this mail group 
who are familiar with both live555 and VLC code if they are aware of 
such problems with VLC?

Sorry for having to post this tangential question in this group.

Regards,
Engin.