IPTV - buffering, stalls, general drop outs. Settings that resolved things for me.

J Smith · 2017-11-01T12:28:29+00:00

Figured I'd share this, as I struggled for a long time with IPTV feeds - they would frequently stall, drop out, replay previous 10 seconds or so, etc. Whe...

T Pedersen

Sharing this script for anyone who want stable iptv with subtitles included into the stream without any buffering issues.

This script uses mplayer for prebuffering and dump it into a file before the continuous ffmpeg pipe stream it out to clients.


#!/bin/bash

trap 'kill -9 $PID && rm -f /home/hts/dump.stream 2>/dev/null' EXIT

rm -f /home/hts/dump.stream

mkfifo /home/hts/dump.stream

mplayer -prefer-ipv4 -cache 8000 -cache-min 80 -really-quiet "$1" -dumpstream -dumpfile /home/hts/dump.stream & PID=$!

pid=$$
( while [ 1 ]; do bb=$aa; aa=$(stat -L /proc/$pid/fd/1 | grep Modify); if [ "$aa" = "$bb" ]; then pkill -P $pid ffmpeg; echo "kill ffmpeg" >/proc/$pid/fd/2; fi; sleep 20; done )&

while [ 1 ]; do
/usr/bin/ffmpeg -loglevel fatal -fflags +igndts -i "/home/hts/dump.stream" -map 0 -c copy -metadata service_provider="Service01" -metadata service_name="FFmpeg" -f mpegts pipe:1
sleep 3
echo "respawn ffmpeg" >&2
done

M. Bergmann

In case you experience buffer problems, stalls and/or general drop outs, you shouldn't forget your client.
For example using Kodi you should modify/increase the video cache:

https://kodi.wiki/Fview/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache

rob p

T Pedersen,
Would you mind explaining how to use this script or directing me to the right place to find out for myself.

T Pedersen

rob p wrote:
> T Pedersen,

> Would you mind explaining how to use this script or directing me to the right place to find out for myself.

Not sure whats ur hardware, but I`m using a rpi4 w/4gb with rasbian buster, tvh 4.3-1857.

guessing u know the part were u make ffmpeg pipe script and add pipe:///home/hts/script.sh in ur mux.

no guide online for this, but basically its only to install mplayer on ur system and implement it in ur piping script.

Dennis Heim

With that script, how is the url to access the stream being pushed? I see adding it under the mux as a pipe:///usr/hts/stream.sh, do I just add the url as an argument?

Darek Z.

Hi all
After searching internet how to fix freezing channels I found this fix here finally. It works great so far !
I have just a question, which I suppose for right person here, may be very easy to answer.
Is there a way to keep more audio streams, or even all available, when passing the stream to ffmpeg? My iptv provider not always passes my preferred language as the first one. So sometimes the first one is absolutely foreign for me like French or German.
Many thanks
Darek

Darek Z.

Could anyone help please ?

Hiro Protagonist

You can do this with ffmpeg. Documentation here: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Stream-selection

Darek Z.

Dennis Heim wrote:

> With that script, how is the url to access the stream being pushed? I see adding it under the mux as a pipe:///usr/hts/stream.sh, do I just add the url as an argument?

Good point.
Shame it remains not answered :/

Hiro Protagonist

Darek Z. wrote:
> Dennis Heim wrote:
> > With that script, how is the url to access the stream being pushed? I see adding it under the mux as a pipe:///usr/hts/stream.sh, do I just add the url as an argument?
>
> Good point.

> Shame it remains not answered :/

Disclaimer: I've not used the script nor have I had anything to do with it previously

From reading the script, mplayer is getting its input from "$1", so it looks like the URL should be supplied as the first argument to the script.

Troy Boy

Been working with IPTV & TVHeadend for the past 6 months now & this thread helped me lots to improve the process.

Here is the mux pipe that i am using that has greatly improved my experiences

pipe:///usr/bin/ffmpeg -reconnect 1 -reconnect_at_eof 1 -reconnect_streamed 1 -reconnect_delay_max 2000 -probesize 1000k -analyzeduration 0 -fpsprobesize 0 -fflags -nobuffer -err_detect ignore_err -i [urlhere] -codec copy -f mpegts -tune zerolatency pipe:1

The -reconnect arguements have helped greatly as have experieced lots of "end of file" errors where tvheadend would just stall, now ffmpeg reconnects and the stream continues.

The probesize, analyzeduration & fpsprobesize is to speed up the start time of the stream

Steve Reid

Troy Boy wrote:
> Been working with IPTV & TVHeadend for the past 6 months now & this thread helped me lots to improve the process.
>
> Here is the mux pipe that i am using that has greatly improved my experiences
>
> [...]
>
> The -reconnect arguements have helped greatly as have experieced lots of "end of file" errors where tvheadend would just stall, now ffmpeg reconnects and the stream continues.
>

> The probesize, analyzeduration & fpsprobesize is to speed up the start time of the stream

Thank You!

Eitan Maodad

Just a quick one for me what resolved all issues was using a proxy (https://www.hls-proxy.com/) that is able to do a lot on the streaming side (buffering and much more) and also deliver to Tvheadend as MPEGTS.

Jim Grove

I'm struggling with getting hls-proxy to work with TVHeadEnd.

I can't seem to get TVHeadEnd to load the IPTV Playlist that is generated by hls-proxy.

What steps did you take to get it to work?

Greg H

Hi all,

I've got this working for my HDHR and TvH Client on my Odroid N2 and TvH Server on my NAS, however the zapping time is like 10-11 seconds. This was mentioned by others in the thread but no one mentioned a fix.

Any ideas greatly appreciated.

TIA

Jay O

Greg H wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've got this working for my HDHR and TvH Client on my Odroid N2 and TvH Server on my NAS, however the zapping time is like 10-11 seconds. This was mentioned by others in the thread but no one mentioned a fix.
>
> Any ideas greatly appreciated.
>

> TIA

I've also seen very slow channel zapping on Odroids running Kodi TVH client. 15-20 seconds. No problem on RPi3

Tim Corbeil

Hello.

I have hls-proxy running with channel links entered into Tvheadend.

The end result is certainly working fine but when in tvheadend, when you select a channel to watch, hls-proxy starts to download it's buffer but it's not fast enough for Tvheadend..

Here's an example of what takes place once you select a channel..

2022-04-25 09:46:51.866 mpegts: Leafs Nation Network 422 in StreamWise Media - tuning on IPTV #1
2022-04-25 09:46:51.866 subscription: 00DC: "HTTP" subscribing on channel "LNN 422", weight: 100, adapter: "IPTV #1", network: "StreamWise Media", mux: "Leafs Nation Network 422", provider: "FFmpeg", service: "Service01", profile="pass", hostname="xxx.xxx.x.x", client="Lavf/58.65.101"
2022-04-25 09:47:01.866 subscription: 00DC: service instance is bad, reason: No input detected
2022-04-25 09:47:01.866 mpegts: Leafs Nation Network 422 in StreamWise Media - tuning on IPTV #2

2022-04-25 09:47:01.868 subscription: 00DC: "HTTP" subscribing on channel "LNN 422", weight: 100, adapter: "IPTV #2", network: "StreamWise Media", mux: "Leafs Nation Network 422", provider: "FFmpeg", service: "Service01", profile="pass", hostname="xxx.xxx.x.x", client="Lavf/58.65.101"

I assume the first attempt is labelled "bad" because hls-proxy really doesn't have enough data yet to provide tvheadend..

Is there a way to tell tvheadend to "wait" on the first connection rather than try the 2nd connection?

Chris Gregson

Hi guys - Lot's of great info in this thread around IPTV and TVHeadend! - I have a quick question, but not sure it's something TVHeadend can do. On occasion a few channels from my IPTV provider 'loop' the same few seconds over and over. The issue is usually resolved on the provider side eventually.

I have setup service priorities accordingly and mapped multiple services to the same channels, however this doesn't help with the looping issue. Are there any settings I could try that would switch to the next service I have defined in these cases?

Many thanks

Bob Birch

Hey guys,

I know this is an older thread, but having issues like this as well.

I’ve made the changes as in the OP. Didn’t make a difference. I assume I am supposed to leave “pass” as the default profile?

I looked at modifying the m3u file with adding the pipe: stuff. Is there a way to change just one channel to see if it makes a difference? I tried modifying one channel in the Muxes section and changing it’s URL, but when I try to watch the channel I get a “No input detected” error.

Do I need to need to remap the service or anything to test it? I have around 1000 channels so would like to test before redoing the whole setup again.

Any hep would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if there is any logging I should include.

Thanks,
Bob

JD J

Can you just put the pipe argument in (envirment) pipe to do the same thing as inserting it in m3u file?

I have been trying to use perl and it executes but no file change.

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