Dropping Streams and reconnecting with VLC

[jmoore]

I am using VLC to connect to a video stream (RTP over UDP) from an Ethernet Camera. I have a couple of questions based on VLC's behavior when the video link drops out from time to time. If the dropout is short (1 - 10 seconds), VLC will pick the transmission up and commence with the video. For longer outtages, however, VLC appears to "timeout" and needs to be re-connected to the Ethernet Camera before displaying video.

This Ethernet Camera is used as a nose cam for a UAV, so any downtime is bad.

My Questions:
1. What does VLC actually do when connecting to this stream? Does it communicate with the host at all? The RF link in our application is a one-way transmission, so we cannot have traffic going up.

2. Is there any way to set VLC to attempt to re-connect indefinitely to the host if the link drops out? We've tried making the connection as a single member in a play list and choosing "repeat all" on the play list, but VLC will still hang ~20% of the time for disconnects.

The RF Link has been buggy and I'm trying to rule out VLC as a contributing factor (question 1), and optimize uptime on the player (question 2). If anyone could lend some insight on these points, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,

Jimmy

[VLC_help]

I t might be better if you ask 1. from mailing list or dive into the VLC source codes.

If playlist repeat doesn't work, you might want to try add vlc://pause: to second entry with little delay and see if that helps.