Bitrate switching always selecting same level

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Oct. 29, 2009Jordan

my XML file for the bitrate switching: http://www.lt11.tv/XML/ColoradoGlowBits.xml
my player is running at http://jordanshipman.louderthan11.com

According to the quality monitor and fro mwhat I can tell by watching the video itself, it always selects level 4 of 4 no matter which file or bitrate I put in that position. All my files are 720px wide. Does that matter? Do they need to vary?

Thanks for all the help!!

Oct. 29, 2009hobbs

 
After some quick testing...

You need to designate different widths in your playlist and also make your player wider (or the widths narrower) so the player can choose the higher bitrate streams. Depending on the width of my player, I got the 1200kbps or the 800kbps file. Never the 1600kbps because my player wasn't wide enough and never the 800kbps because my connection was always at least 1600kbps.

For HTTP progressive download, the player only chooses a bitrate on startup. If you want dynamic bitrate switching, you will have to use a pseudostreamer or a real streamer.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
  <channel>
    <item>   
      <media:group>
        <media:content bitrate="1600" url="http://www.lt11.tv/stream/ColoradoGlow(1600kbps).flv"  width="720" />
        <media:content bitrate="1200" url="http://www.lt11.tv/stream/ColoradoGlow(1200kbps).flv"  width="620"/>
        <media:content  bitrate="800" url="http://www.lt11.tv/stream/ColoradoGlow(800kbps).flv"   width="520" />
       <media:content  bitrate="400" url="http://www.lt11.tv/stream/ColoradoGlow(400kbps).flv"   width="420" />
      </media:group>
      <media:thumbnail url="http://www.lt11.tv/prepics/ColoradoGlowPrePic.jpg" />
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>



Oct. 29, 2009Jordan

Hmm okay, so let me clarify:

My player is set to 640px wide--does that mean any width specified above 640px will not be selected?

Other than that, everythign seems to be working just fine!

Oct. 29, 2009Jordan

Thanks for all your help!

Oct. 29, 2009Jordan

Also, just for my info, what is defined as a pseudostreamer and a real streamer? Wich one is Wowza or FMS?

Oct. 29, 2009hobbs

Yes, with a displayarea width of 640, if all of the files or the higher bitrate files are wider than the displayarea, only the smallest/lowest-bitrate file will be used. None of the higher bitrate files, with a width greater than 640, will be shown in the normal (non-fullscreen) player.

As Jeroen posted in this thread: http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/forum/Bug-Reports/20268/Bandwidth-Switching-Playing-Wrong-Video on Oct.26, 2009, you should adjust the native file size to the bitrate for the best video display.

RTMP (FMS, Wowza, Red5) is real streaming.

Using a serverside script or the streaming modules for IIs, Apache2, nginx, or LightTPD is pseudostreaming, which attempts to duplicate the scrubbing functionality of real streaming.

Nov. 04, 2009rajan

Hi Hobbs,
Have you tested bitrate switching in response to variation in available bandwidth. It appears that this fuction is still not implemented in the JW Plyer 4.6 in relation to Wowza 1.7.2.

I have couple of questions:
1. Has anyone tested 4.6 with Wowza 1.7.2 for bitrate switching in response to variations in available bw? If so, does this change only at the start of the video or would it change in the middle of the video when the user interacts with the video (i.e. press pause/play, resize, seek etc.). Based on the Wowza forum, 1.7.2 has no capability to sw b/w on the fly. It is done only at the start of the video.

2. Wowza 2 Preview has the capability to switch (key frame synchronised) video on the fly (same as FMS). Has anyone tested this functionality of Wowza 2 with Jw Player 4.6.

Thanks.

Nov. 04, 2009hobbs

 
The only testing that I have done against a Wowza server is the Wowza server that Longtail Video is using in the sample playlist bitrate.xml from here: http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/browser/testing/files/bitrates.xml

The Wowza server does switch bitrates at startup and when toggling fullscreen — however, it seems to take forever and two days to switch to the higher/lower stream, especially compared to the FMS server that is used in the sample playlist.

I'm not sure of the version of the Wowza server that is being used — it doesn't seem to be reported in the metadata that is exchanged between the server and the player.

For testing, I make my player width larger than the widest video file, with stretching set to none; then it is easily apparent that the stream has switched by just watching the width of the video file that is displayed.

Nov. 05, 2009rajan

Thanks Hobbs.
I could get bit rate switching when full screen is selected and vice versa. It selects lowest and highest quality videos for those screen modes. I couldn't see it selecting medium level streams from the middle of the list.

Hope to see Wowza 2 tested with 4.6.

I think it takes long time to switch due to a buffering issue.
.

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