[vlc-devel] Figured out streaming issues and why youtube works better than VLC player

[Tony Anecito]

Okay I resolved it by by using a combination of vlc config settings. Increasing 
the cache time and changing the H264 frame rate.

Regards,
-Tony



----- Original Message ----
From: Tony Anecito <adanecito at yahoo.com>
To: vlc-devel at videolan.org
Sent: Sun, October 17, 2010 11:53:57 PM
Subject: Figured out streaming issues and why youtube works better than VLC 
player

Hi All,

I have had noticed that even with vlc 1.5 latest nightly builds is that HD 
videos stutter. If I set my http caching high enough the stutter goes away. When 

running the same video on the youtube player no stutter and the video can play 
sooner. Watching the youtube player closely it does cache the video but with 2 
very important differences:

1. The youtube player appears to cache very quickly like maybe it changes the 
video request rate somehow so the user does not have to wait very long? But the 
replay is at the 1.0 rate. It is almost like having a FIFO buffer with a read 
rate for playback and a write into FIFO rate much higher if bandwidth permits 
it.
2. The video is saved to disk for replay next time the player is invoked for 
that specific video via the internet or http.

I arrived at these conclusions by noticing the inner color on the slider for the 

youtube player indicating the cached video. The player does not start playing 
till there is at least 10 seconds of cached video and by the time the video is 
halfway through the entire video had been cached. If I do not delete temp 
internet files and I close the browser then replay the video I noticed the 
player inner slider color indicates it is not re-fetching the video since the 
inner color is rendered across the entire length of the slider. If I clear the 
temp files then the cached video is gone and the reading of the video occurs all 

over again.

So my question is what setting do we need to get the same behavior where the 
video is cached (very quickly) ahead of the playback?

Is there a way maybe cached to disk for playback and vlc automatically looks for 

the cached file and if present uses that instead?


Seems like with all the focus on streaming accross the internet this should be a 

good way to remove some of the user issues of stutter video.


Regards,
-Tony