[Live-devel] strange behavior with Android 5.0 lollipop media player

Ben Rush ben at ben-rush.net
Tue Apr 19 13:32:28 PDT 2016


We've been using Live555 very successfully now for a while but have
encountered a quirk that is likely due to a bug or oddity in the media
player on Android 5.0 Lollipop. The problem is that it's becoming a bit of
a showstopper for us (a major client is using this particular version of
Android), and I'm wondering if there is possibly a way to work around the
player's quirk. I know this is likely not considered a bug in Live555, but
perhaps there's a quick setting in the server that can save us for the time
being.

It's easy to duplicate (at least on these phones). If you spin up Live555
and connect the phone's native MediaPlayer, everything works fine. However,
if any client is already connected to the server, then the phones NEVER
work. The stream never shows up.

Investigating with Wireshark shows that the RTSP and RTCP handshakes are
identical in both situations with one exception: the initial RTCP Sender
Report sent by the server to the phone when the phone is connecting the
first time has a Sender's Packet count of 0, but when a client has already
been streaming on the server, the packet count is >0. In looking at the
specification it's unclear as to whether this should be zero for a new
client, or whether client connecting to an already running stream should
expect this to be >0, but since this is the ONLY difference, I have to
imagine this is the "problem". But I'm going to assume it's a bug in the
CLIENT since this is the first time we've EVER seen this issue.

One more reason I think this is the issue: if I turn off reuseFirstSource
when creating the session, the phones connect just fine regardless of their
order. But, again, having this option set to TRUE seems to be good for
performance reasons.

I guess what I'm looking for is confirmation that the Sender's packet count
SHOULD be >0 for a client connecting to an already running stream, and as
to whether anybody has any experience in dealing with this situation or
ideas on how to get around it.

Thanks in advance.

FYI - I can provide Wireshark files if you need.
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