Improving Poor Streaming Performance on Linux

[jjeremydiazrex]

Hi VLC Forum,

I have been having some performance issues streaming UDP 4K video between 2 linux Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS servers. I am using 2 NICs and a cat6 cable going between both servers that supports 10gE.

To start the stream from an mp4 video I first convert the video to a ts video (any way to start a stream straight from mp4?):

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -bsf h264_mp4toannexb output.ts

Then I start vlc on the first server:

vlc udp://@:1234

Last I start the stream on the second server:

cvlc output.ts -vv —sout=‘#standard{mux=ts,access=udp,dst=10.0.0.101:1234}’

While the stream starts immediately, the resulting video is unviewable (multiple frame drops, gray/green screens) and terminates at about 5 seconds into the 1:30 minute long video. One this that I noticed is the CPU load average goes over 8 and VLC's cpu utilization jumps to 200%.

Both systems have a Radeon Pro WX and the following CPU information:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2f36gnl7ncwwv1d/cpuinfo?dl=0

Below are the logs I collected from both the vlc streaming client and server (dropbox):

client: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9ws4rjyixud5 ... t.out?dl=0
server: https://www.dropbox.com/s/a395hpll7cbhp ... r.out?dl=0

Any advice on how can I improve the streaming performance between both servers?

Thanks for any help!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Benchmark the software and optimize it... Patch welcome.

[1MAXT3HKphYo]

Why are you trying to stream like this? What's your end goal? There may be an easier way to get what you're after.

[jjeremydiazrex]

I'm doing some cable benchmarking and want to measure performance on streaming 4K video.

[1MAXT3HKphYo]

I'm doing some cable benchmarking and want to measure performance on streaming 4K video.

If you're streaming from file to the local network you might consider samba or dlna? Plex works well as a dlna server. I use it to stream 4k Blu Ray remuxes all the time. Streams start immediately, server practically idling. You don't need 10gb to stream 4k either. A gigabit interface will do even for multiple streams.

Edit: reading a bunch of different streams from disk may stress our your system if you aren't using a SSD / San / raid array / hybrid or if you're using a pi where practically the whole system is plugged into a single USB 2 hub.