The VideoLAN Forums

I am running 0.8.6e Janus on Ubuntu 8.04

vlc plays remote icecast streams fine.

I have an mp3 stream, locally generated with icecast.

wget http://localhost:port/stream.mp3 -O- |madplay -

plays it fine.

vlc http://localhost:port/stream.mp3 gives very choppy sound and no sound at
all after a few seconds.

vlc -v2 shows many "main audio output warning: audio drift is too big (192386), dropping buffer"
warnings.

Comparing debug output from a local stream and a remote stream the only difference is the line

"main private debug: pre-buffering done 64914 bytes in 0s - 275 kbytes/s".

for the local stream and

"main private debug: pre-buffering done 8688 bytes in 0s - 54 kbytes/s"

for the remote stream.

Apparently for the remote stream less data is buffered.

Reducing the bursting-size in the icecast config file from 64K to 16K FIXES THE PROBLEM.

Conclusion: there is some error in the timing calculations of vlc so that
when there is too much pre-buffered data errors are generated.

Could you please try a 0.9.* build? If that doesn't fix it, please submit a bug report on http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/

I tried to install a 0.9.0 build by adding the repository.


deb http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/hardy-i386 /


as recommendended on http://nightlies.videolan.org/

Unfortunately it doesn't work. I get messages like

Failed to fetch http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/har ... 1_i386.deb 404 Not Found

Looking at http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/hardy-i386/latest/

it appears that the correct filename should be

libvlc2_0.9.0-git20080726-1_i386.deb

Can you advice me how to proceed?

Michel

Hardy nightlies aren't maintained anymore. We only provide up to date Intrepid builds for ubuntu.
I guess that the easiest method to try is to download an intrepid live CD from http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/daily-live/, hook up an ethernet cable, edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file to add the VLC nightly builds line and install VLC in the live CD session. (Or just update your system to Intrepid but that can be a bit risky I guess)

I have compiled 0.9.1 from source. The bug persists. I am filing a report.