OBS will not stream to VLC Player

[Nick]

Hello,

After getting ffmpeg installed I thought it would be a simple matter to be able to stream from OBS to the Portsdown. How wrong I was...

To test I started VLC player in another computer but could get no display. I checked settings in my Draytek Vigor 2832n router and turned on IGMP Proxy on WAN1. Still not working.

Some google searching later I found it should be possible to view using VLC on the same computer as OBS is on by using the path udp://127.0.0.1:1234, thus eliminating the router.

Still no output in VLC.

I have now spent 4 nights without success so decided to try very basic settings.

I can record from OBS to a disk OK and the file plays back with no problems. With VLC player I can open some (not all) YouTube videos with Media/Open Network Stream, so that seems to be working OK.

If I set the output path in OBS as "udp://224.0.0.1:9999" I just get "An unspecified error occurred while recording" message.

If I set the output path in OBS as " udp://127.0.0.1:9999" I don't get the error message, but no display on VLC.

I have tried turning off Kaspersky but it makes no difference.

Is there an easy way to test if OBS is sending the stream ?

I can't seem to notice much change in the processor load when it is supposedly sending to the local loopback address.

After 4 nights of searching and trying different settings I am getting nowhere. What do I have to do to get OBS to stream to VLC on the same computer ?

Once I have that sorted out I can move on to sending to VLC on another computer to check there are no issues with the router and then to the Portsdown.

Regards,

Nick.

[G8GKQ]

Hi Nick

Have you read my article in CQ-TV 268 pp 14-15 about UDP? That might help.

Dave, G8GKQ

[Nick]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the reply. I had read your article, but not well enough it would seem.....

I was using what I had obtained from using Google, but there was something missing that I noticed further down your article - that is the packet size which I had missed.

When I entered this into OBS File Path or URL field "udp://192.168.1.27:9999?pkt_size=1316" then all started working OK. I could view the stream on another computer which was on a network switch on another LAN output from the router.

You will notice that from the address I was using unicast. I did try multicast "udp://230.0.010:9999?pkt_size=1316" and it also works, but it also brought the network down to a crawl, even though the data throughput for streaming was only around 18MB/s, and it's a gigabit connection. E-mails would not send/receive and I could not even get into the routers admin page as it timed out. The dongle that is plugged into the router to access the 3G network on Three stopped responding. As soon as I stopped recording all became good again.

There are some errors and warnings produced in VLC, but it does seem to work OK.

Hopefully unicast will be OK as I have set most devices (including the Portsdown) on the network as static IP's using the routers Bind IP to MAC address function.

When I have got the hang of using OBS I will test it with the Portsdown, but will most likely not be ready for tomorrow night on the Oscar 100 net.

Regards,

Nick.

[G8GKQ]

Hi Nick

Pleased that the article was helpful.

Many domestic routers get upset by multicast UDP; hence the reason for using a dedicated router in the "NanoBox".

Dave