[vlc] HTTP streaming protocol in VLC 1.0.0

[RATH, CHRISTOPHER A (CHRISTOPHER A)]

We have been using VLC 0.8 and 0.9 for the past several months to stream
video using the HTTP streaming protocol using a custom server.

With these earlier versions we had good performance both with MPEG-2 video,
and with MPEG-4 video encoded using ffmpeg.  The VLC player would make a few
connections to get started and then would eventually just read continuously
from the same connection.

With the 1.0.0 version and indexed MPEG-4 video, the player seems to seek
about once a second, which is causing a disconnect and reconnect to the http
streaming server, so the performance is awful and eventually it gets so far
behind it just stops playing.  With the unindexed MPEG-2 video, it exhibits
similar behavior.

I realize this could be a problem in many different areas:
    1. A change in the HTTP streaming protocol implementation
    2. A change in the codecs for the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video
    3. A change in the way content is buffered when streaming, etc.

I have tried this with VLC 1.0.0 on Windows XP and MacOSX with the same
results, so it doesn't appear to be related to a particular port.

Any ideas about what might have changed so I can try and work around the
problem on the server side, or fix the code in the client?

Chris Rath
car at research.att.com