[Helix-client-dev] RealPlayer times out and stops working
Erik Hodge ehodge at real.comJeffery Small wrote: > I wrote: > > >> I connect to a smil music feed from radioio and everything is playing >> just fine. However, at exactly 3 hours 22 minutes and 54 seconds into >> the feed, the RealPlayer simply halts. >> > > Erik Hodge <ehodge at real.com> wrote: > > >> I have not seen this, but it may be that the SMIL file dictates a >> duration of 3:22:54 or that the audio file has that duration and the >> player core thinks it's a live stream or one with an unresolved end-time >> value in the SMIL. If you send the SMIL file to this list we'll be able >> to narrow it down. >> >> Also, please let us on this list know the following: When the player >> halts at that time, can you seek past that time in the stream? Can you >> seek right up to before that time and see what happens after that? >> > > Eric: > > The smil file is the same one we discussed in the other message thread: > > <smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/Language" > xmlns:rn="http://features.real.com/2001/SMIL20/Extensions"> > <head> > <meta name="title" content="radioioJazz"/> > <meta name="author" content="radioio"/> > <meta name="copyright" content="© 2006 ioWorldMedia, inc. (iwmd.pk)"/> > </head> > <body> > <audio src="http://radioio.sc.llnwd.net:8090"> > <area href="http://www.searchplay.com/radioioJazz/index.php?a=2050" > alt="now playing" > actuate="onLoad" > sourcePlaystate="play" > external="true" > rn:sendTo="_rpbrowser"> > </area> > </audio> > </body> > </smil> > > > I have now commented out the <area> section so I will see if that could > have had any bearing on the problem - but I doubt it. When you ask if I > can seek around the critical time, I'm not sure how I can do this with a > streaming feed as opposed to a fixed audio file. In the case of this feed > the duration slider and the skip backward/forward buttons are all inactive > in the RealPlayer. If there is some method of doing what you ask, please > tell me and I would be happy to try and report the results. > > I did bring this issue to the attention of the tech support folks at > Radioio, but they had no clue as to what the problem was and did not > believe that they were imposing any time limit at their end. (Which isn't > to say that they ane not still doing something!) Because the timing is > so precise at 3:22:54 I was pretty sure that it must be something in the > code where a counter was triggered or a buffer was overrun. This is 12,174 > seconds. If you divide this by 1024 you get 11.89 which is fairly close to > 12. Does this look like anything that might be hard-coded into the source? > No, there's nothing hard-coded. I once played a live audio stream for three weeks. I, too, played with the numbers and nothing jumped out at me: 3:22:54 == 0x2F8E seconds == 0xB9C2B0 milliseconds. As Greg Wright mentioned, it might be overflowing some variable, but the number is not right on an overflow spot. Does this happen with more than one of their channels? If it's the same exact time with different feeds, then the overflow theory is bolstered a bit. > Another thing I find is that if I pause the stream, later when I click on > the Play button, RealPlayer reports: > > Buffering 0% - Live Pause > > but never reconnects to the feed. It just sits there stuck, similar to > what I see when it times out after 3:22:54. If I press Stop and then Play > it will immediately reconnect and resume playing. > I'm not a Solaris expert, I'm afraid. It sounds like you found a bug in that player. Could you file a bug report? Go to helixcommunity.org and click on "Report a bug!" link on the right side of the home pg. (to https://bugs.helixcommunity.org/enter_bug.cgi). Click on "player" and then fill in all the fields you can, taking care to set the OS field. > Also, is there any way to manually increase the buffer for a stream if you > are having problems and the feed is continually being lost? I played with > the "Buffer partial clip" setting on the Playback tab in preferences, but > this doesn't appear to have any effect on a stream of this type. Hmm, I can't think of anything other than that. I don't know the full support of all features in the Solaris player. > Maybe this is something that can also be incorporated in the SMIL file? > There is a SMIL "prefetch" element but I believe that only applies to on-demand (not live) streams. You can try it but it's not documented other than in www.w3.org's SMIL 2.0 specification. - Erik > Thanks for all of your help. > > Regards, >