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A
Anonymous
April 21, 2006
Question

Choppiness of Video

  • April 21, 2006
  • 3 replies
  • 825 views
Hello Everyone,

I am a complete newbie to FMS2. In fact, I don't know much about server-side technologies at all. There is a gentleman I work with that is taking care of that side of things for me, but I am posting here in his place as the work he does for me is part-time, and I need to start finding solutions to my problem now while he's at work at his main job. So, please bear with me.

I'm streaming video via RTMP from FMS2. This requires a "keep-live" connection, as while the user is watching the video, the video data is being discarded...the video file is not downloaded to the user's local machine. I've had many people test the site and make sure the videos are working great, and I've gotten no complaints. However, my client reports that if anyone tries to view the videos from their main offices, it shows up but plays VERY choppy. I know that this is some sort of network issue and not a browser issue, Flash Player issue, or even a problem with the local machine because I had taken my laptop to their offices and tapped into their network via wireless and experienced the same choppiness. When I tried my laptop at home with my wireless connection, the video played just fine.

In the Flash document, I'm using the FLVPlayback component. The flash file uses player version 8, as the FLVPlayback component is only supported in version 8 and higher.

This is all the information I have to go on. If anyone has any ideas as to what is causing this choppiness, please let me know. If you have any solutions either server-side, or flash code-wise, or even anything the client can do to their network settings to alleviate the problem, I would love to hear your thoughts.

If you need any more information than what I've provided here, please let me know and I'll do my best to find out. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post.

Ed
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    E
    edvp
    Participant
    April 25, 2006
    Does the network where you see the choppy video sit behind a firewall/proxy server which blocks 1935 but allows port 80? If yes, the choppiness is a very common artifact of the RTMPT protocol. Rather than tunnel the protocol directly in HTTP, Macromedia elected to implement a polled approach to the HTTP tunneling. So when you're doing RTMPT, the client is polling the server, and the frequency of the poll determines the throughput that can ba accomplished. Especially with high bit rate video streams, it is easy to have sufficient latency in the network that you don't get enough video transferred quick enough to keep it playing continuously.

    If you adjust the IdlePostInterval and IdleAckInterval parameters in Adapter.xml (the file has documentation embedded in it), you'll find that the problem disappears.
    A
    Anonymous
    April 24, 2006
    If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the problem being the host network disallowing the keep alive connection. If it were a firewall issue, I would expect the connection to fail every time.

    If you want a real-world idea of the bandwidth available to your client's office, someone there might want to try the bandwidth test on the NSF network:

    http://ciseweb100.cise-nsf.gov:7123/

    A
    Anonymous
    April 21, 2006
    Do you have trouble receiveing video from other FMS sources on the problem network?

    I'm gussing it might have to do with WAN bandwidth to their network. I've had clients complain about ppor peroformance on their office networks, and the culprit in all cases was insufficient bandwidth on the client side. If the office has a 1.5mbps pipe, and there's a few hundred people sharing the pipe, the bandwidth gets eaten up pretty fast.
    A
    Anonymous
    April 21, 2006
    Hey Jay,

    Checking other websites that stream video was the first thing my server guy said to try. He suggested YouTube.com, but I found that they're not using the same method of delivery that we're using (looks like they're using progressive download because when you pause a movie in the middle, the download bar keeps on filling up). When they viewed YouTube.com, they didn't experience any choppiness. Would you know of any websites that stream video in the same manner as I am? I'll definitely have the client try to visit those sites and see if they get the same results.

    I'm also checking into what their connection type/Kbps rate is on their network. I'll post it as soon as I find out. However, I don't think it's the employees that are chewing it up, as they have a total of 3-4 people in their offices at a time. VERY small company.

    Ed
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