Those on the QO100 net may have noticed my video was freezing. This was a new development, having been fine for years. It started not long ago. The only thing I can think of that might have caused this was a driver change. Checking with VLC verified there was no issue with the OBS-camera. Checking with ffshow verified there was nothing obviously wrong with the TS, but it is more tolerant than a transmission of missing data etc. The freezing was strictly limited to cameras. Videos didn't have the problem.
So what did I do last week? I was sent a Pluto to add a TCXO to. This PC didn't have the Pluto drivers and software, so I installed them. Thinking this may be related to something I had installed recently, I uninstalled the pluto software. A subsequent short test was free of freezes. It is too early to say if this really was the problem. It could easily be something else. I would be interested to know if anyone else has noticed a similar problem.
Mike
Video Freezing on the Net
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This forum is run by the BATC (British Amateur Television Club), it is service made freely available to all interested parties, please do not abuse this privilege.
Thank you
Re: Video Freezing on the Net
Mike,
Interestingly I have just installed the Pluto drivers to my pc to use Satsagen, I'm now wondering if that caused my previously absent lip sync drift? I see a driver uninstall in my future.
73 Dave.
Interestingly I have just installed the Pluto drivers to my pc to use Satsagen, I'm now wondering if that caused my previously absent lip sync drift? I see a driver uninstall in my future.
73 Dave.
...are you sure I can't use a pair of 813's?... 
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radiogareth
- Posts: 1384
- Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 9:46 am
Re: Video Freezing on the Net
Interesting, as a complete PC novice (other than using one) I have got all sorts of stuff randomly installed including Satsagen in its many versions and OBS/Windows always allowed to upgrade (except OBS1.28 the latest). Never had a single problem....its an old I7 desktop that I put together 7+ years ago, running soft encoding as (a) processor too old for Intel encoding and (b) NVIDEA graphics board is a cheap old thing with no bells and whistles to drive 3 monitors.
Fingers crossed and long may it last.....
Gareth
Fingers crossed and long may it last.....
Gareth
Re: Video Freezing on the Net
Hi Both,
The trouble started after the Pluto software was installed and seemed to stop after it was uninstalled. That doesn't mean the software caused the issue, it might have done, but it could equally likely be a windows update that broke something or the action of uninstalling a driver fixed something else. Hard to tell.
I can rule out the Portsdown 4, which was turned on at the time. If that was also trying to use the Pluto then the streams would clash, but I have never told it the IP address and why would it anyway when in standby mode and set to stream to BATC. That also doesn't fit with the USB camera symptoms.
What puzzles me is the freezing was only on USB camera inputs and there were no issues monitoring the TS with ffplay. The video in OBS was not frozen and there were no errors reported by the encoder, so it seemed to be network related but only when USB video sources were being used. Receiving OBS-camera in VLC worked as expected too. Even stranger, there was no indicated problem with the Pluto TS analysis, it was getting the data and the sound worked throughout. So the encoder was either getting and encoding frozen video, or outputting frozen video. As this happened after a period of time and not instantly and recovered immediately with a change of OBS source, it seem likely be something to do with the way virtual camera and ffmpeg pass data, like a buffer overflowing, but why would that have anything to do with the Pluto USB drivers?
I will see if it is really fixed at the weekend, but I could not make it fall over last night and I left it running, though not transmitting, for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile another problem has emerged. I can no longer capture UDP in VLC from the localhost. It works fine from any other host. That problem was not fixed by uninstalling pluto drivers. As it worked before, the only cause I can think of is windows update. If windows has updated the IP stack, that might be the root cause of all of this as pluto software creates a virtual interface.
The trouble started after the Pluto software was installed and seemed to stop after it was uninstalled. That doesn't mean the software caused the issue, it might have done, but it could equally likely be a windows update that broke something or the action of uninstalling a driver fixed something else. Hard to tell.
I can rule out the Portsdown 4, which was turned on at the time. If that was also trying to use the Pluto then the streams would clash, but I have never told it the IP address and why would it anyway when in standby mode and set to stream to BATC. That also doesn't fit with the USB camera symptoms.
What puzzles me is the freezing was only on USB camera inputs and there were no issues monitoring the TS with ffplay. The video in OBS was not frozen and there were no errors reported by the encoder, so it seemed to be network related but only when USB video sources were being used. Receiving OBS-camera in VLC worked as expected too. Even stranger, there was no indicated problem with the Pluto TS analysis, it was getting the data and the sound worked throughout. So the encoder was either getting and encoding frozen video, or outputting frozen video. As this happened after a period of time and not instantly and recovered immediately with a change of OBS source, it seem likely be something to do with the way virtual camera and ffmpeg pass data, like a buffer overflowing, but why would that have anything to do with the Pluto USB drivers?
I will see if it is really fixed at the weekend, but I could not make it fall over last night and I left it running, though not transmitting, for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile another problem has emerged. I can no longer capture UDP in VLC from the localhost. It works fine from any other host. That problem was not fixed by uninstalling pluto drivers. As it worked before, the only cause I can think of is windows update. If windows has updated the IP stack, that might be the root cause of all of this as pluto software creates a virtual interface.