The VideoLAN Forums

Could anyone tell me why it isn't currently possible to stream an OGG container over UDP? If this is possible, but not supported, will it be considered for implementation in future releases of VLC? If so, when can we expect it?

The reason I ask is that I am doing a project where I transcode MPEG4/AAC to Theora/Vorbis (open source formats that are preferred by more and more people every day), but I am getting jerky playback at the client end no matter what arguments I supply to the command line script. I manage to lose a lot less frames by --no-drop-late-frames, but the jerkiness remains. The computer I use have more than enough power to perform the tasks of streaming and transcoding (Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 w/ 1GB RAM), and it is nowhere near a CPU utilization that would provoke a need for frame dropping. It doesn't go over 30%.

Network synchronization does not seem to work, as the client either says 'nothing to play' or segfaults before it even gets that far. --clock-synchro 0 makes no difference. Now, streaming over UDP may not remedy the crash causes, but I have reason to believe it to be a lot smoother than TCP, for obvious reasons, of course given an uncongested network with enough bandwidth.

Developers, are you reading this?

To the best of my knowledge, OGG cannot be streamed over UDP in any way. There are RTP payload formats for Vorbis, Theora and Speex. VLC only implements the later (patch welcome for the other two).

If I understand you correctly, OGG cannot possibly be streamed over raw UDP, but if encapsulated in RTP first WILL work, just not implemented in VLC yet?

Yes.

Thanks for info, I'll guess we just have to wait and see. RTP/UDP should be faster than HTTP/TCP, so it's a welcome feature.

Don't hold your breath. Nobody has offered to implement RTP/Vorbis and RTP/Theora at the moment.

I'm not expecting miracles, to be sure. However, I also noticed that neither MP4 nor QuickTime can be streamed over RTP/UDP. It seems to me that adding these features would be very interesting to a large number of people, and thus deserve a place on the VLC project's to do list in the near future, ensuring an even more widespread use.