Videolan not useful - unfortunately

[mimerz]

Don't get me wrong - I can and do appreciate all the work that must have been invested into vlc. I have been a developer since 0.9x version of Linux - so, yes, I know what I am talking about.

The task: Stream a live video from a tv-source embedded into the web, http-access, bandwidth available 512 Kbps
Software available: Fedora 13, VLC 1.1.5, pre-compiled from repo

Here's what I went through:

Try -1-: Stream Flash. Transcode with FLV1 works, poor quality, loses audio-sync pretty fast - not usable;
Try -2-: Stream Flash. Transcode h.264 / mp4a / mp3 failed to produce anything that could be embedded into a website
Try -3-: Stream VP8 - didn't work at all.
Try -4-: Stream Theora - Doesn't work with cortado applet, works within video-tag. Loses audio-sync from time to time,especially after some connection problems, isn't able to recover, needs restart to re-sync audio
Try -5-: Stream mms - Transcode with DIV3, mp3 - poor video quality, very poor audio synchronization - not usable;

I also tried a lot of mp4 variations (with mp4v, mp4a muxed into asf works best), however the vlc mozilla applet crashes the browser.

I am sure I may not have been able to grasp all of vlc's switches, options and modules. And I understand that vlc relies on other codecs and libs and that some problems are not vlc's fault.

However: Any streaming solution should provide basic transcoding functions for usage within web environments. I don't want to become a vlc specialist: I want to stream video into a web-page. In a way, that all or at least most browsers are able to view it. Without the need to restart the server every 20 minutes to re-sync audio. From my perspective, vlc fails to meet this target.

Something like $ cvlc pvr://dev/video0 --sout flash10-low,dst=0.0.0.0:8081/video.flv

Today's world is Android,IPhone, Flash and WebM. The vlc team should concentrate on providing these services flawlessly, everything else is (IMHO) gravy.

Just my two cents after spending 3 days to get anything working.

Michaela

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Easy to say, dude. You're free to pay if you are not happy with what you get for free.

[mimerz]

Easy to say, dude. You're free to pay if you are not happy with what you get for free.

I don't consider myself to be a free rider. I am just pointing my finger to the problem. If videolan would provide working solutions for the every day problems, you may have less of a headache to collect some donations. But I am willing to make the first step and to put my money where my mouth is. I am more than willing to donate a few hundred bucks, if it helps to improve the important stuff. All I am asking is a working 'all browsers compatible' http-based streaming solution that delivers acceptable quality (including audio-sync) at around 512 Kb/sec.

I don't care if its Theora (with support for the Cortado applet), Flash/H.264 or WebM.

Deal?

mm.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Donations are always low, even if people get what they want... Because they expect it to work...

[Sébastien Escudier]

I think Rémi meant to pay for another software, or find and pay a developer to improve vlc.

[mimerz]

I think Rémi meant to pay for another software, or find and pay a developer to improve vlc.

Oh - I see. Stupid me. I thought videolan is meant to be 'the' streaming solution / alternative. But it seems (as one can see in other topics as well) suggestions or even donations are not welcome. As I don't have time to play around with other people's constructions sites, I might as well go and buy a flumotion server.

Case closed.

mm.