Stream cut for a few seconds

[northerndub]

I'm on Windows and streaming to youtube, after every song the stream is down for like 1-2 seconds. Is there any way to fix this or is my setup to slow to get the next song going without a cut?

[LauraWebdev]

In theory, this is how this project works. It streams one song and then streams the next (unlike apps like obs who always have an open stream and just add sources on an open channel).

YouTube should usually keep up with that, if your stream is lagging try to check if your system is powerful enough to keep the stream up and not drop frames or try to play around with the bufsize config variable.

[torch2424]

Yup perfect response! I want to work on a "single video" mode at somepoint, so this doesn't happen, but that would be way far down the line :)

[northerndub]

thx for the responses, the stream runs fine besides when it jumps to the next song. I will look into it again.

[northerndub]

I played around with the config file but none of the changes affected the cut in any way.

More side Information, it's a virtual Server with Windows Server 2016 and with the stream running it peaks not over a 30% load.

[torch2424]

Are you using gifs by any chance? MP4s load better. But yes, no matter what, there will be cuts in the stream. Perhaps I can make it configurable to make the cuts have empty audio before and after? 😄

[LauraWebdev]

You can also try to disable the latency-free mode on youtube's dashboard to get a 30 seconds delay as a buffer.

[northerndub]

I did try mp4 and gifs and the difference is not significant. The delay only delays the cut.

[torch2424]

I would try what @andreasWebDev I personally use that on my Youtube streams in the past, and had no issues 😮

[LauraWebdev]

Yeah my DigitalOcean droplet always catches up the second of delay.. could you post the config file (without your stream key) in here? @northerndub

[northerndub]

{
  "stream_url": "rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/$stream_key",
  "stream_key": "",
  "ffmpeg_path": "",
  "video_codec": "libx264",
  "audio_codec": "aac",
  "audio_bit_rate": "128k",
  "audio_sample_rate": "44100",
  "normalize_audio": true,
  "video_height": "480",
  "video_width": "854",
  "video_bit_rate": "500k",
  "video_fps": "12",
  "bufsize": "512k",
  "crf": "28",
  "preset": "veryfast",
  "threads": 6,
  "max_gif_size": "720",
  "api": {
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": "8000",
    "key": "super-secret-api-key",
    "number_of_history_items": 100
  },
  "radio": {
    "audio_directory": "./audio",
    "video_directory": "./video",
    "overlay": {
      "enabled": true,
      "font_path": "./fonts/Lato-Regular.ttf",
      "title": {
        "enabled": true,
        "text": "placeholder",
        "font_color": "#FFFFFF",
        "font_border": "#000000",
        "font_size": "10",
        "enable_scroll": true,
        "font_scroll_speed": "20",
        "position_x": "0",
        "position_y": "5"
      },
      "artist": {
        "enabled": true,
        "label": "Artist: ",
        "font_color": "#FFFFFF",
        "font_border": "#000000",
        "font_size": "10",
        "position_x": "2",
        "position_y": "15"
      },
      "album": {
        "enabled": false,
        "label": "Album: ",
        "font_color": "#FFFFFF",
        "font_border": "#000000",
        "font_size": "10",
        "position_x": "2",
        "position_y": "25"
      },
      "song": {
        "enabled": true,
        "label": "Song: ",
        "font_color": "#FFFFFF",
        "font_border": "#000000",
        "font_size": "10",
        "position_x": "2",
        "position_y": "25"
      },
      "image": {
        "enabled": false,
        "image_path": "./live-stream-radio-overlay-image.png",
        "position_x": 0,
        "position_y": 0
      }
    }
  },
  "interlude": {
    "enabled": false,
    "frequency": "0.2",
    "audio_directory": "./interludes/audio",
    "video_directory": "./interludes/video",
    "overlay": {
      "enabled": false,
      "font_path": "./fonts/Lato-Regular.ttf",
      "title": {
        "enabled": false,
        "text": "Please wait, music shall resume shortly...",
        "font_color": "#FFFFFF",
        "font_border": "#000000",
        "font_size": "10",
        "position_x": "2",
        "position_y": "5"
      },
      "image": {
        "enabled": false,
        "image_path": "./live-stream-radio-overlay-image.png",
        "position_x": 0,
        "position_y": 0
      }
    }
  }
}

[torch2424]

@andreasWebDev the config looks fine, and isn't using any high performance values.

@northerndub Yeah, honestly, this is how live-stream-radio works. I tried looking into how to keep it continuous, but I could not find a way to have an ffmpeg process switch inputs on the fly. I'll keep this open, and feel free to suggest any solutions to this in the code.

[LauraWebdev]

I've also tried researching it, in the end, programs like OBS can do it as well, so there is got to be a way (though they might have an active video stream that they can manipulate internally)

[torch2424]

I think what OBS does is take in VLC as an input. And VLC manages that for them?

I can definitely look into that, though, I wouldn't want to add VLC as a dependency

[northerndub]

My other method was using VLC, I would feed a continuous ffmpeg stream with the desktop audio and playing the music through VLC, a little program "snip" grabs the title and writes it in a file and ffmpeg writes the content of the file on the stream. Very crude setup and really hoped it would work but I have weird audio cracks when using it. I think its because I must use a virtual audio card :/
I didn't found anything if you could feed ffmpeg directly VLC besides dshow.

I also have very little knowledge so everything was try and error :D

OBS is unfortunately very demanding and also breaks at some time, so not really good for 24/7

[StoneCypher]

Here are some approaches to switching ffmpeg inputs on the fly, which is the correct solution layer.

Hot junction .3gp

Use HTTP Live Streaming

Multiplex through mpeg-ts

[StoneCypher]

You can also do it manually with streamselect but that's pretty difficult

[torch2424]

@StoneCypher Woah! Dude I've been looking for a solution for this for like forever, I am soooo stoked you found these!

Keeping it real, I have been super busy in other projects involving WebAssembly. Thus, I'd honestly try these out because they seem like they would work. Particularly, the HLS looks the easiest / simplest to do. But I doubt I'd have the time until I get some vacation days from my new job that I just started like a month ago 😂

@StoneCypher could you open a PR for this? If so, I'd totally take the time to try it out and merge it 😄

Also, I saw on your Github profile you're based out of SF? I'll be living out here for a couple more weeks. If you want to chat about the project, we can grab coffee some time! Just hit me up on Twitter or something 😂

[beamercola]

I'm streaming this through Ant media server and playing it on iOS. It seems to issue a stop command on AVPlayer while it's changing tracks. This library is so incredible btw.

[torch2424]

@beamercola Thanks for the feedback! I super appreciate it! 😄 👍