Cannot pre fill buffer when looping between pipe and .ts

[str3tmonk]

Hello everyone,

I'm running an VLM instance (VLC 2.0.7 -- 2.0.5+git20130512+r572) on Ubuntu 12.04 and I'm having a problem with "main error: cannot pre fill buffer" message. My setup is kind of different, however.

I have 2 inputs: myPipe.fifo and videoStub.ts. The VLM element is setup to loop between the 2 inputs. The videoStub.ts file plays a 10-sec movie with "Stream not available" message and then checks if myPipe.fifo is running. If no data in pipe, it returns to the videoStub.ts. Ideally, this should run forever like this.

Here is my media element:

Code: Select all

new STREAM-NAME broadcast enabled loop setup STREAM-NAME input myPipe.fifo input videoStub.ts output #gather:standard{access=http,mux=ts,dst=/my_output} option sout-keep control STREAM-NAME play

This runs fine for the first 1-2 minutes of the VLM instance but then all the elements that have empty pipes become "STOPPED" and shortly after VLM will freeze. The strange thing is that the working elements (the ones whose pipes are functioning) continue working. VLM shows the "main error: cannot pre fill buffer" and if I add DEBUG verbosity then it just shows the "start buffering" message and freezes there.

Can someone tell me how to further debug this? Or maybe I should install older version of VLC and see if it works there...

Thanks in advance!

[str3tmonk]

I think I may have fixed the problem. I'm not sure but it hasn't frozen in a day now.

Two things I did:

1) Added "file-caching=1000" as a sout option, this means that the pipe is now being buffered for 1 second
2) Re-created the stub file because the dimensions (DAR, Display Aspect Ratio) was different from the live stream.

Hope this helps someone.