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rtmpsrc: Streaming a live rtmp stream over a slow network eventually stops

Submitted by Jonas Ådahl @jadahl

Link to original bug (#782496)

Description

It's spring time, meaning time to watch wild birds in their nests. This is done playing a RTMP live stream. The problem is that, when doing this over network connection that is slow enough to occasionally requiring buffering, after some time, gstreamer will eventually stop streaming all together.

Before this happens, there will usually be some significant buffering sessions, and the displayed video content will slip further and further away (time wise) from the live stream. This can be easily observed by looking at a timestamp in the video content, comparing it to the clock of the computer. Sometimes, gstreamer will struggle playing over a couple of minutes old stream content, before stopping completely. Restarting the video player resolves the problem, and the bird watching can continue.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Start a bird watching session, for example one of the Ospray nests in Estonia:

gst-play-1.0 rtmp://193.40.133.138/live/kalakotkas2

  1. Watch birds, observe the clock in the bottom left corner (on my machine, they only differ a few seconds)

... time passes, internet speed varies ...

  1. Gstreamer will have a hard time showing new frames, it'll try to buffer, maybe show a new frame, buffer, .. at this time, one can observe the clock in the video and clock in on the computer differs more

  2. Gstreamer will forever give up and not show anything new

For example, while writing this bug-report, the time difference went from ~5s to ~30s.

Work-around:

Restart the player, and it'll work again.

gstreamer version: 1.11.91
Tested with vlc, totem and just gst-play.

(for info about the nests, see http://www.looduskalender.ee/n/en/node/1230 )