[Live-devel] live555MediaServer and trick mode

[Ross Finlayson]

> On Aug 6, 2020, at 8:09 AM, Jim Ham <jimham at porcine.com> wrote:
> 
> First of all, I'm a newbie to this. I'm trying to set up a media server on a private lan. So far things are working quite well except for random access to the streamed file.
> 
> mkv and webm formats both exhibit the same behavior: The file streams fine until I move the slider in VLC. After a few seconds the video resumes, but very choppy and the audio never syncs. As there is no mention (that I can find) about this in the archives, I have to believe I have done something wrong.

It’s unlikely that you’ve done anything wrong (assuming that you’ve built the LIVE555 (including the media server) code without modifying it).  The problem might be that your file is (somehow) not well set up for ’trick play’; see below.  The problem might also be VLC, which we could not do much about (as VLC is not our software); however, make sure you’re using the latest version.


> I'm transcoding with Handbrake 1.3.1. Is there something special in the setup for Handbrake to enable tricks to work?

I don’t know.  However, you should make sure that the resulting “.mkv” (or “.webm”) file contains frequent ‘key frames’ (at least one per second; preferably more frequent than this), as the trick play mechanism works by seeking to a key frame.

Another thing you could try is outputting to a Transport Stream file, rather than a .mkv” (or “.webm”) file.  You might find that a Transport Stream file works better for trick play.  Note, however, that for trick play on Transport Stream files to work, you will need to generate a special index file for the file; see
	http://us.live555.com/liveMedia/transport-stream-trick-play.html


Ross Finlayson
Live Networks, Inc.
http://www.live555.com/