Using VLC in Waterfox to view CCTV, High CPU or Freezing Issues :(
Posted: 22 Jan 2019 10:52
Hi guys!
This might be slightly unusual. I need to view IP Cameras in a web browser, across 5 screens, with upto four cameras per screen. Myself and a friend have made a page in PHP/Javascript that has multiple VLC plugins, accessing the RTSP streams from each camera. We're using one Waterfox instance per screen. You can use a drop-down list to select which cameras to view on each screen. We've opted to use a VLC plugin as we need to be able to independently control audio volume per camera, and mute/unmute specific cameras as required.
The cameras are all on the local network and connected via cat6 ethernet @ gigabit speeds. Using VLC 2.2.8, I'm able to view 18 cameras (the ideal) simultaneously, with the CPU usage only around 40%, however after a minute or two the cameras freeze, then reload automatically (as per our script) after about 5-10 seconds. This isn't good from a security standpoint. Using the latest VLC (3.0.6), the freezing issue disappears, however when adding more than a certain number of cameras or browser instances, usually around 12 cameras, the CPU usage randomly jumps from 30-40% all the way upto 100% immediately and freezes the entire machine until the browser is force-closed.
I've tried tweaking many settings in the program including the hardware acceleration etc etc but no joy.
The spec is good, a brand new system with i7 8700 (6 core), 8GB DDR4, nvidia GTX 1050, Samsung EVO 950 m. 2 SSD. 3 monitors are running via the GPU, 2 via on board.
I've tried a few nightly builds and some older versions, they all have one of these two problems, or just crash on opening (using version 4).
Any help would be massively appreciated, my apologies for such a long post!
This might be slightly unusual. I need to view IP Cameras in a web browser, across 5 screens, with upto four cameras per screen. Myself and a friend have made a page in PHP/Javascript that has multiple VLC plugins, accessing the RTSP streams from each camera. We're using one Waterfox instance per screen. You can use a drop-down list to select which cameras to view on each screen. We've opted to use a VLC plugin as we need to be able to independently control audio volume per camera, and mute/unmute specific cameras as required.
The cameras are all on the local network and connected via cat6 ethernet @ gigabit speeds. Using VLC 2.2.8, I'm able to view 18 cameras (the ideal) simultaneously, with the CPU usage only around 40%, however after a minute or two the cameras freeze, then reload automatically (as per our script) after about 5-10 seconds. This isn't good from a security standpoint. Using the latest VLC (3.0.6), the freezing issue disappears, however when adding more than a certain number of cameras or browser instances, usually around 12 cameras, the CPU usage randomly jumps from 30-40% all the way upto 100% immediately and freezes the entire machine until the browser is force-closed.
I've tried tweaking many settings in the program including the hardware acceleration etc etc but no joy.
The spec is good, a brand new system with i7 8700 (6 core), 8GB DDR4, nvidia GTX 1050, Samsung EVO 950 m. 2 SSD. 3 monitors are running via the GPU, 2 via on board.
I've tried a few nightly builds and some older versions, they all have one of these two problems, or just crash on opening (using version 4).
Any help would be massively appreciated, my apologies for such a long post!
I'll try and trigger the CPU usage issue again then extract the logs. I'll have a google as to how to do that.