HLS playback - broken?

[Ivoshiee]

I've tried various versions of the VLC for Windows (including latest nightly builds) and each of them is failing on the HLS playback.

Even the Apple reference stream will crash and burn on latest VLC (http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/sampl ... opall.m3u8) - it will play about 20 seconds then stop with "[01f27a28] packetizer_mpeg4audio packetizer error: Multiple blocks per frame in ADTS not supported" and that is it.
Random streams out of Web are experiencing similar or other issues, but will generally produce no sound playback or just a total playback freeze within about 10-20 seconds (I see that the VLC is still downloading segments, but will never play them).

Am I doing something wrong here or is it the sad state of the HLS playback?

[vel_tins]

nothing wrong with you...I have had the same experience with several versions of VLC.
Even if the segments are provided by another VLC, the receiving VLC is not able to play them correctly.
Don't know what the problem is? Maybe no interested developers?
Even almost all Android media-player, are able to play HLS Streams without problems....
I used this VLC-version from Anevia for my HLS Streams earlier. It worked flawlessly, but is a little bit outdated now
http://demo.anevia.com:8080/ott/vlc.php

[Ivoshiee]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I tested that player, but it seems to be broken as well. Only difference it will stop downloading segments and exit player mode after about 20 seconds. I wonder if these protocols are somehow too complex to handle or are there missing specifications...

[linpoyu0415]

I also have had the same experience with versions 2.0.5 of VLC under Windows XP. When I looked into the m3u8 raw file of http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/sampl ... opall.m3u8 . It looks like below,

Code: Select all

#EXTM3U #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=200000 gear1/prog_index.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=311111 gear2/prog_index.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=484444 gear3/prog_index.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=737777 gear4/prog_index.m3u8

It seems to be a nested m3u8 files. If I try to play URL with http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/sampl ... index.m3u8. It works correctly. Maybe that's the problem.