How do you setup buffering for playback of a stream?

[jimbobuk]

A problem i have when trying to be strict with my stream fitting in available bandwidth is that most of the time you have to be conservative to leave enough headroom for the difficult parts of the video to still be within bandwidth..

I was wondering what buffering options there are available.. are they available at the server and/or client end?!?

Its just i think if i gave a reasonable buffer of say 400k or something it'd really help to iron out some of the problems... if the video DID go over budget for a few seconds there is scope for the buffer absorbing it and playback being ok..

I sometimes have problems playing dvd sized files over my lan even though its 100meg switch... 99% of the time the bandwidth is no where near its limit, yet occasionally i'll get hiccups... I use SageTV as my PVR solution and i think that this problem possibly causes some of the client lockups i suffer from.. if buffering is easy with vlc then i could use it if my network was being annoying and being lan whack the buffer up to something respectable like 20meg or something crazy..

Is this possible?! where are the controls for this?

Cheers

Jim

[markfm]

VLC buffers are called caches.

Open Settings -- Preferences. Check "Advanced options"

Go to Modules -- Access2. There are different caches available, based on the source type -- file, DVD, directshow framegrabber,... They are time-based -- milliseconds.

Press "Save" if you want the cache changes to be permanent, or OK to just have them changed for that one session.

[jimbobuk]

thanks Mark... all this needs to happen on the recieving client i assume!?

Cheers

There's not a way of debugging the status of buffers.. seeing how much %full they are so you can see if its struggling before dropping.. a friend had this on something once and i was well impressed by his ability to preempt problems

[markfm]

access2 buffers are input buffers, client side.

If you're using VLC to stream out, there's a UDP output buffer, too, down in Modules -- sout access -- access_output_UDP

So, if you're serving from VLC, you can set the buffer relative to the sever VLC's video source, then set the UDP output buffer, then at the client set the client's buffer -- 3 control points.

If you start playing with serving, things get complex, the number of items you can twiddle when you transcode (you can change frame rates, video frame size, adjust various CODEC parameters)

[anon]

VLC buffers are called caches.

Open Settings -- Preferences. Check "Advanced options"

Go to Modules -- Access2. There are different caches available, based on the source type -- file, DVD, directshow framegrabber,... They are time-based -- milliseconds.

Press "Save" if you want the cache changes to be permanent, or OK to just have them changed for that one session.

Are these settings applied to the mozilla plugin as well?