Latency in using VLC (0.8.5) as a streaming client

[schao]

Hello,

I have a Linux server streaming out MPEG4 video using the UDP protocol and am using VLC running on XP to decode and display the MPEG4 video. The server and client machines are directly connected using an Ethernet crossover cable to minimize network latency.

The lowest end-to-end latency is currently about ~1.5 seconds. If I replace VLC with a different software MPEG4 player then the latency cuts down to about 500ms so that tells me there's room for optimization in VLC.

The only setting that seems to make any difference is the "UDP Caching in ms" field. If I set it to 1, then the latency is ~1.5 seconds. If I set it to, for instance 2000, then the latency is 2 + 1.5 seconds.

Is there any additional settings or code modifications I can tweak to bring down the latency further? By the way, I'm using both VLC and its ActiveX control in a customized app.

Thanks,
Shane

[schao]

Any experts out there that can shed some light on the subject? My incoming bitrate is around 1.5Mbits/sec average. Thanks.

[mrambhatla]

I noticed that if you explicitly set real-rtsp cache, udp cache and tcp cache to 1000ms or less, it considerably reduced the latency.
Also make sure the overlay, drop-frames and skip-frames options are turned off.