The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

i am trying to stream an mpeg video via WLAN but i cannot connect successfully to the server. The problem seems to be that the server is always uploading at a maximum of 50 kb/s no matter which video should be streamed. The wlan connection isnt the problem because when i access my ftp server i can transfer data with at least 700 kb/s via WLAN. So there must be an upload limitation somewhere in the vlc settings.

When i open the messages window on the server everything seems to be ok. But in the message list on the client there are a lot of "PTS is out of range (...) dropping buffer" error messages.

How can i fix this and tell vlc to use the full available upload speed?

[edit]to fully exclude wlan as a problem i have tried to stream via an 1 GBit LAN connection with the same limitations... maximum upload from the vlc streaming server seems to be limited to 50 kb/s[/edit]

By default there aren't upload limit on VLC nor possibility to limit uploads.

By default there aren't upload limit on VLC nor possibility to limit uploads.

Hmm that doesnt really help to find out where the problem is...

I tried to deactivate even the firewall but it didnt help... I have absolutely no idea, what is causing this limit. Maybe the packet size is too small so that it cannot reach a high bandwidth?

When having problems streaming it is best to separate transcoding from streaming. Given transcoding is necessary for streaming:

1. You need to know that the file you are trying to stream is good. Look at messages. Of coarse you can NOT do this while trying to transcode or stream.

2. Transcode the file locally and play back the file looking at messages both times IE while transcoding and while playing back the saved file.

If there are problems in any one of these checks they must be resolved before trying to stream the file as a server. This may range from selecting a new format, container, size and or bitrate but could even show the the source is not streamable.

Thanks for the info... you think that the target data which is created by VLC could be corrupt? But that would mean that i am not able to play back the stream. If i connect to the server via the loopback interface everthing works well... the video is displayed smoothly. Unfortunately I cannot check the bandwidth used when using the loopback interface but i thnik it must be definately more that 50 kb/s

The next thing is that i am not re encoding the source because it is already encoded. When playing back the local file VLC shows in the stream info that the file is using an mpga audio and an mpgv video codec.
The file is recorded from a DVB-S TV card.

But i also tried using other videos on my hard disk which all show the same behaviour that somehow only max. 50 kb/s are getting transmitted. If the video has a higher bitrate than it does not work via the network. (except using the loopback adapter, but that doesnt get me very far )

[edit]
I have looked in the message window while playing the DVB-S record file. It is full of "received buffer in the future (...)" warnings. Could this maybe keep the file from getting streamed well?
[/edit]

[edit #2]
Tried another video, this time a divx, which is played back without warnings but also gets limited to 50 kb/s -> same problem
[/edit]

1. Transcoding is REQUIRED for streaming!!!I believe the only exception to this rule is MPEG TS. But many players will still not play the files that VLC can put in this container while for most players MPEG 2 in this container is not a problem.

2. The loop back does seem to indicate the file is good but did you do what I suggested? If not you may never know.

3. This may or may not be helpful to you but does provide a means to get and idea as to what through put is for various parts or this country (USA):

http://www.dslreports.com/stest

1. Transcoding is REQUIRED for streaming!!!I believe the only exception to this rule is MPEG TS. But many players will still not play the files that VLC can put in this container while for most players MPEG 2 in this container is not a problem.

I am playing back (or at least trying to ) the stream also with VLC so i think it should be able to play it. I also tried re encoding for testing purposes. But the problem with the bandwidth limit does persist. I even tried to use 256 kBit/s for video and 128 kBit/s for audio. I think that video bitrate is already pretty low and it should be just under 50 kb/s but the error messages remain in the client. even lower bitrates do not really help...

2. The loop back does seem to indicate the file is good but did you do what I suggested? If not you may never know.

I first tried it with the DVB-S recorded video:
While transcoding no errors or warnings came up in the message log.
I transcoded it to file using MPEG TS, mp4v 1024 kb/s, mpga 192 kb/s. After playing back this file the message log is full of "received buffer in the future (...)" warnings but the video seems to be played back without any other problems.

Then I tried the same using an divx video:
Absolutely the same behaviour as the DVB-S video; no errors while transcoding and the same warnings while playing back but the video itself is running ok

I dont really think that there is something going wrong because the client can show the video for a short time. If i use caching then the video runs smoothly until the buffer has completely been played. It gets stopped because of the 50 kb/s upload.

I wonder why this only happens when using VLC. Any other network services on my pc (FTP Server, HTTP Server or even Streaming with Windows Media Encoder) are working fine and are using the full available upload.

3. This may or may not be helpful to you but does provide a means to get and idea as to what through put is for various parts or this country (USA):


http://www.dslreports.com/stest

Since i only want to stream it in my home network and not via the internet i think that i dont need to test my internet bandwidth. If i would be streaming via internet then i would understand why it is only uploading 50 kb/s because it is nearly the upload my internet connection has (normally around 64 kb/s). But I bind the streaming server to a local network interface and i am using a local network ip to connect to the server (even tried to disconnect the router from the internet to be sure that it doesnt even try to send it via the internet).