Live video stream buffering, dropping frequently

Help and Support Vero V
1

Hello,

I’ve had the Vero V for some time now, and have been experiencing strange issues with live mpeg-ts streams. Very frequently the picture starts to buffer, lose signal completely, then come back smooth again. Usually, it happens soon after the stream starts, then after several seconds, or minutes later. I have noticed, the responsiveness of Vero V is worse, slower when it starts to buffer. I have tried the same video stream on Vero 4K+ and seems the same thing happens. However, when I play the same stream on VLC-Player on the PC it plays smoothly without any issues. I use VPN on the Vero devices, and PC. I switched to different VPN provider on the Veros, and the problem does not go away. The devices are connected to the network via eth0. I think some processes cause the device to slow down with video processing. I wanted to check stats of the eth0 interface to see if there are any drops on the link, but I don’t know what command to use on the Vero.

Also, I am not sure if this matters, the VPN client on the PC uses Lightway protocol, while Vero uses OpenVPN, which appears to be outdated (OpenSSL too). Would OpenVPN cause the processing issues on Veros?

Thanks

Here is the link to the Logs: https://paste.osmc.tv/awehejuhav

I removed some irrelevant data related to the VPN service.vpn.manager, that was spamming the log.

Here is the general info of the video stream:

General
ID : 1 (0x1)
Complete name :
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 1.45 GiB
Duration : 1 h 5 min
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 3 193 kb/s
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS

Video
ID : 256 (0x100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 1 h 4 min
Bit rate : 2 777 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : MBAFF
Scan type, store method : Separated fields
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.054
Stream size : 1.26 GiB (87%)
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 257 (0x101)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 2
Codec ID : 3
Duration : 1 h 5 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 41.667 FPS (1152 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -96 ms
Stream size : 119 MiB (8%)

2

After further testing, I believe the problem is with the VPN.

3

Quite possibly. Could you test without it?

4

Sorry for late response. The issue exists with the VPN disconnected. One thing I noticed, sometimes the stream starts to buffer, stuck right after starting it. Then after stopping it, and restarting the stream, it works flawlessly for few minutes, and then starts to drop again. One idea came on my mind, the stream framing is misaligned, and the ffmpeg codec needs to make some corrections, that slow down the Vero.

Again, there are no issues on the PC and the VLC.

5

Anyway, it looks like a bandwidth problem:

2024-09-02 15:21:34.620 T:3269     info <general>: CVideoPlayerAudio::Process - stream stalled
...
2024-09-02 15:21:34.694 T:3268    debug <general>: Stream stalled, start buffering. Audio: 0 - Video: 0
...
2024-09-02 15:22:35.387 T:3269     info <general>: CVideoPlayerAudio::Process - stream stalled
2024-09-02 15:22:35.405 T:3268    debug <general>: Stream stalled, start buffering. Audio: 0 - Video: 0

We have a nice article for such cases that helps to get more information about the situation using iperf3, see [How To] Check Network Performance with iperf3
So, installing iperf3 on VeroV and the source of your live stream (a TVHeadend system?) could be really helpful.