[vlc-devel] Buffering when reading live HTTP streams

[Steinar H. Gunderson]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 02:03:27PM -0400, Robert Forsman wrote:
> Probably the most important adjustment I would recommend is "buffer
> based on time, not kilobytes".  If you're pulling down an 0.5Mbit/s
> stream, only buffer 0.25 Mbyte (4 seconds).  If you're pulling down a
> 19Mbit/s stream, buffer 9.5 Mbyte.  Feel free to pick a value other
> than 4 seconds.  I think MPEG 2 has around an 0.5 second buffer, while
> H.264 can go up to 10 seconds.  Unfortunately I'd have to go digging to
> be certain about those numbers.

Unfortunately, there's pretty much no way of knowing the maximum bitrate
when you're just pulling down a stream over HTTP. Also, are not the
recommended latencies you're referring to for the decoder, not a streaming
layer?

In any case, what you're referring to should surely stay after the socket
buffer. I'm just talking about a band-aid since seemingly nobody (including
me) has the time or interest to fix this properly. :-)

/* Steinar */
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