Issues with VLC 1.0.2, h264 and webcam encoding.

[VLC_help]

We did a live show last night using vlc 1.0.1 for 5 non-stop hours. The audio is clear with no distortions, and video looks great. A little blury but thats the web cam we used. At one point we had 13 people streaming from us in the video stream. I'll provide the link if you want, but the file is roughtly 550megs in size.

Between 1.0.1 and 1.0.2

* x264 default-values closer to x264.exe defaults.
* x264 rc-behaviour fixes:
- if user defines qp-value, CQP-mode is used
- otherwise if user defines vb=0, CRF-mode is used
- otherwise ABR-mode is used
* x264 set vbv-bufsize/vbv-maxsize better if user hasn't defined these:
- ABR mode set vbv-max-bitrate=bitrate
- vbv-bufsize is bitrate * seconds between keyframes (keyint/fps)

and there were also

Apparently VLC (on Windows) has been distributed for some time with a completely broken x264 due to the use of a completely broken compiler (gcc 4.2).In particular, the MV costs seem to be calculated incorrectly on win32 when linking from an application compiled without -ffast-math to an application with -ffast-math.
I am not entirely certain why this occurs, but the result is, unsurprisingly, encoding quality that makes MPEG-2 look good, due to the motion search being completely broken.

and I am guessing either one of those changes could have caused problems.

[kdh]

OK.. understood. I'm ok with that for now and wait for the developers to resolve those issues.

thanks for digging up those notes for me!

[kdh]

I've tried the latest 1.0.3 gits and 1.1.0 trunks and the issue isn't resolved.

I checked trac, but didn't see these get resolved either. I might have just missed the tickets?

Anyway, I freaking love VLC, and want to help anyway possible.

[VLC_help]

I haven't seen any changes on mailing list.

[nuvolablu]

I'm doing all sorts of awesome stuff with VLC over here in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=60947&p=203460#p203460

However, I just upgraded my windows clients to VLC1.0.2 and my h264 real time encoding is not working as well. The video looks good, but the video will just freeze, then catch up later.

I've changed the following settings in vlc 1.0.2

1. Get into VLC
2. Click on Tools.
3. Click on Preferences
4. Bottom right of the screen click on "All" Under the show Settings Box.
5. Click on the + next to Input / Codecs
6. Click on the + next to Video Codecs
7. Click on x264
8. Change setting "B-Frames between I and P" from 3 to 0
9. Change setting "Number of reference frames" from 3 to 1
10. Change setting "Quality Based VBR" from 23 to 0
11. Change setting "Set QP" From -1 to 40
12. Change setting "How AQ distributes bits" from 2 to 1.
13. Change Setting "Strenght of AQ" from 1.00 to .50
14. Click Save

In the generated stream box, I paste this command:

:sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=160,height=250,width=300,fps=15,acodec=mp3,ab=96,channels=2,samplerate=44100,audio-sync,venc=x264{keyinit=15,vbv-maxrate=80k,vbv-bufsize=128k,qcomp=0.8,qpmin=10,qpmax=41}}:display

just to make sure things work and view the stream.

i set the verbosity level to 2 and see a lot of these messages:

Code: Select all

stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync main warning: late picture skipped (4111886 > 0) main warning: late picture skipped (4085220 > 0) stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync main debug: removing module "float32_mixer" main debug: looking for audio mixer module: 3 candidates main debug: using audio mixer module "trivial_mixer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 98.000 ms - Total 98.000 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 98.000 ms) main warning: output PTS is out of range (59177), clearing out main warning: input PTS is out of range (62534), trashing main warning: input PTS is out of range (36412), trashing main warning: input PTS is out of range (10289), trashing main warning: PTS is out of range (-16111), dropping buffer mpgatofixed32 debug: libmad error: bad main_data_begin pointer mpgatofixed32 debug: libmad error: Huffman data overrun main warning: output date isn't PTS date, requesting resampling (74171) main warning: buffer is 47772 late, triggering upsampling stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync main warning: resampling stopped after 10451000 usec (drift: 438) stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync main debug: removing module "trivial_mixer" main debug: looking for audio mixer module: 3 candidates main debug: using audio mixer module "float32_mixer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.000 ms - Total 0.000 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.000 ms) stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync stream_out_transcode debug: drift is too high, resetting master sync

It gets worse when lots of action is going on in the webcam. By worse, I mean the video will just freeze, but the audio will continue to sound fine.

does anyone have any suggestions?

Doing this with VLC 1.0.1 and things work flawlessly.

Hello,
I saw you use the duo VLC/flowPLAYER...
I tried a lot to make them working togrther but....the best result was to have a shutter video...
can you post (or send me in private) the complete configurazion of vlc and flowplayer?
thanks a lot in advance.
S.

[kdh]

Sure..

see this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=60947

As for flow player, i will switch to the VLC player shortly..

But we use the most basic settings to make it work. just followed the read me.

[kdh]

I see that vlc 1.0.3 is now out. Will check it out when I get some time tomorrow. =)

[Trax]

Added ticket with proper details and referred to this thread.

H.264 encoding quality problem on win32 due to miscompiled x264 with broken gcc 4.2:
https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3143

[kdh]

awesome!! thank you!

would love to test or help out any way I can. =)

[kdh]

I just testest with vlc 1.0.4rc

http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win ... 1117-0202/

and it looks like there is a HUGE improvement.

was this resolved?

[VLC_help]

I haven't seen any action in mailing list. But it might be a contrib update related to x264 miscompile.

[kdh]

Neat.

I'm pretty excited about testing the final release of 1.0.4 when it comes out.

[kdh]

Im happy to say that version 1.0.5 has completely fixed my issues.

thanks for working those issues out guys!

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Thanks for the report.