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TimB_Kulabyte's avatar
TimB_Kulabyte
Visitor
15 years ago

2.6 build 693 breaks HLS HTTP streaming

We are a video encoder company and we output iPhone HTTP streams natively from our encoder. With 2.6 build 687, the Roku box was playing our streams very well as does the iPhone and iPad. However, I just opened up a new Roku box ready to install an app and ship it to a customer and it did an auto update at setup to 2.6 build 693 and it cannot play the same iPhone streams as the 2.6 687 box sitting right next to it. This is a big problem for us as we are ordering and shipping these weekly to be used with our encoder product.

The behavior I'm seeing is when I play a stream, the retrieving box comes up with a small amount of the blue bar and then it immediately goes back to the menu.

Is it possible to revert the build to 2.6 687?

Also, we run live streams from our encoder 24/7 and would be happy to have Roku incorporate these in the QA process it would help prevent this from happening.
Roku Developer Program

9 Replies

  • RokuJamesL's avatar
    RokuJamesL
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    Someone in our developer group will be contacting you privately to get some details on the issue you are reporting.

    In the mean time, we would be more than happy to incorporate your streams into our QA process. Can you send me a PM with some information how you are running this content on your Roku players? I am assuming it's through a channel you've developed. If you have a private channel code, that might be all we need.
  • korapati's avatar
    korapati
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    i have same issue. before upgrading to this new build 693 hls streaming was working fine. now it is not working. please help.
  • RokuJamesL's avatar
    RokuJamesL
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    Can you provide some more details? Are you a content/channel developer? What specifically is not playing?
  • korapati's avatar
    korapati
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    I provide solutions to content providers. my client does live streaming of indian channels using Roku.
    I am streaming in hls format. h264 video at 768 kbps and aac audio at 64 kbps. those streams were working fine until upgrade to new firmware. i have no clue on what has changed in this new firmware when it comes to video streaming.
  • TimB_Kulabyte's avatar
    TimB_Kulabyte
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    I can now provide details about why build 693 was causing problems for me. Hope it helps someone out there.

    Starting with build 693, Roku changed the default minimum bandwidth to 250Kbps which is sensible because you would rarely want to play a video stream less than this. However, in this case I was creating my segmented HTTP streams using Wowza Media Server and Wowza, by default, marks the stream bandwidth in the .m3u8 as 64Kbps regardless of the actual bitrate as follows:

    #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=64000

    Thus my Wowza HTTP streams would not play. With Wowza, if you want to control the bandwidth reported in the .m3u8 file then you need to put a .smil file in the content directory similar to the following:

    <smil>
            <head>
            </head>
            <body>
                    <switch>
                            <video src="mp4:720p.sdp" system-bitrate="2200000"/>
                            <video src="mp4:ipad.sdp" system-bitrate="748000"/>
                            <video src="mp4:mobile.sdp" system-bitrate="200000"/>
                    </switch>
            </body>
    </smil>


    This .smil file has three streams listed for adaptive streaming, but you could also have only one stream listed. As a side note, I believe that you will want to have highest bandwidth to lowest order in the .smil if you are doing adaptive.

    Alternatively, you can modify the minimum bandwidth to a lower value so that the default Wowza bandwidth does not get in the way. Below is an example and I believe the value specified is in Kbps.

    videoclip.minBandwidth = 20


    Once I forced Wowza to put the correct bitrate in the .m3u8 or lowered the minBandwidth, the problem with build 693 not playing the stream is gone as expected. I have another issue with HD streams freezing on playback, but that will be the topic of another post.

    Regards,

    Tim
    timb@kulabyte.com
  • cgerrish's avatar
    cgerrish
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    Thanks Tim, I just upgraded as well and it broke my wowza streaming.
  • ianbeyer's avatar
    ianbeyer
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    According to an e-mail conversation with Charlie at Wowza Support, There's an upcoming fix in the next version (currently testing on Patch 12 on Wowza 2.1.2) to address this specific issue.

    If you just point to a stream without wrapping it in a .smil file it will say the bandwidth is 64K. There is a whole new system for dealing with this in the upcoming version. It will properly calculate this value based on the bitrate of the stream and will generate an automatic multi-bitrate stream with the audio being the second bitrate. It is described here:

    http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9680
  • SolveLLC's avatar
    SolveLLC
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    "TimB_Kulabyte" wrote:

    Alternatively, you can modify the minimum bandwidth to a lower value so that the default Wowza bandwidth does not get in the way. Below is an example and I believe the value specified is in Kbps.

    videoclip.minBandwidth = 20


    Once I forced Wowza to put the correct bitrate in the .m3u8 or lowered the minBandwidth, the problem with build 693 not playing the stream is gone as expected. I have another issue with HD streams freezing on playback, but that will be the topic of another post.


    Where do you set videoclip.minBandwidth = 20 in Wowza?
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    "SolveLLC" wrote:
    "TimB_Kulabyte" wrote:

    Alternatively, you can modify the minimum bandwidth to a lower value so that the default Wowza bandwidth does not get in the way. Below is an example and I believe the value specified is in Kbps.

    videoclip.minBandwidth = 20


    Once I forced Wowza to put the correct bitrate in the .m3u8 or lowered the minBandwidth, the problem with build 693 not playing the stream is gone as expected. I have another issue with HD streams freezing on playback, but that will be the topic of another post.


    Where do you set videoclip.minBandwidth = 20 in Wowza?


    That particular item is in the content metadata in BrightScript.