Trouble shooting drop outs when publishing a stream

[showcasefloyd]

So I'm not exactly sure why it is happening, but when I record a stream over my
network to the FMS on some occasions the stream pauses and then resumes,
sometimes as much a second or two later. I've set the buffer on the client side
to 13 which I have no idea is helping or hurting. I've tried setting the buffer
to 30 on the server side. I have no idea if this is helping either.

So I would love any advice on the best ways to look and see if it's a buffer
issue or not.

Please help.

Floyd

[Graeme Bull]

For recording you generally don't need to set a buffer time unless you are
concerned that the user doesn't have enough bandwidth to send the data to the
server without losing quality or framerate. There shouldn't be any pausing
going on either way. When do you see this pausing? on playback?

[showcasefloyd]

Yes, it seems to be when your playing back a recording. My application is set
up so that users with a web cam, can save video clips of themselves to the FMS
and then play them back. What seems to happen is that for no reason the
playback will just pause and then start playing again. I've also seen it
sometimes skip or drop frames as wel during playbacl. I assume this is all the
same problem.

How does one try and trouble shoot something like this. Could if be a problem
with how the server is configured?

Are there recommendations for this type of stuff?

Philip

[Graeme Bull]

I don't think the FLV is getting recorded with a pause in it, but the dropped
frames are most likely because the bandwidth is too low for the stream that you
are trying to record. Reduce the framerate or size or quality on the recording
stream and try again. What settings do you have it at now?

I would view the FLV offline to see if that pause is in there. If not, then
you know it's a network issue.

[showcasefloyd]

Well I followed your advice and watched the FLV offline and indeed there are
pauses in it. Could it be possible that these are caused by having a buffer
that's too high? It seems like the thing freezes while it's waiting for more
data to fill up it's buffer and that's why it pauses?

As far as my settings. When I'm publishing:

For the video I use myCamera(32768,0) and for audio I use myRate(22);

For my buffer I have it set to 13.

Just so you know this is on a very fast, internal network. The app I'm
building is to be used in a college class.

Thanks in advance,

Showcasefloyd

[Graeme Bull]

When recording, don't set the buffer to see what happens. I think you may be
right in that the flash player is buffering 13 seconds worth, sending it all
and then getting back to recording. So that pause is the "sending time" maybe.