VLC seems to be truncating RTSP requests

[planetjeff]

Hello - I am running a live555 media server, and was wondering why I was getting nonsensical results with VLC. I've tested the behavior I'm about to describe with VLC 2.0.3 and 2.0.7 on Windows 7, as well as a much older version of VLC, 0.9.4 on linux. All behave the same way.

Essentially, VLC is truncating the path to media in RTSP commands. At first I was printing out debug statements in live555, but instead went ahead and got a wireshark capture to verify what I'm seeing. The wireshark capture showed receiving the following RTSP commands from VLC:

Protocol: RTSP, Info: OPTIONS rtsp://134.51.8.70/ssrd/VIDEO/xmen.ts RTSP/1.0
Protocol: RTSP, Info: DESCRIBE rtsp://134.51.8.70/ssrd/VIDEO/xmen.ts RTSP/1.0
Protocol: RTSP, Info: SETUP rtsp://134.51.8.70/xmen.ts RTSP/1.0
Protocol: RTSP, Info: PLAY rtsp://134.51.8.70/xmen.ts RTSP/1.0

Now, I'm able to receive the video file as long as I start live555 up with 'home' directory /ssrd/VIDEO, but if it's anything else, I get nothing. Additionally, since the path is truncated out, I can't get anything in subdirectories!

I've compared this with QuickTime player, and ffmpeg, and neither of them have this behavior. Wondering if this is a known issue, or a new one?

In any case, thanks for your time!

Jeff Davey

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

That would seem to be a bug in liblive555 client. VLC does not implement RTSP client side directly.