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wwdv  
#1 Posted : Saturday, January 17, 2015 8:27:50 AM(UTC)
wwdv

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I am just curious what your experiences are with FFmpeg.
There are not much topics in this forum about FFmpeg.
The experiences on other forums are sometimes a bit contradictory.

My experiences with FFmpeg:
Uses less cpu recources.
Audio sync is not stable (however with the new parameter 'Treads' in vMix 14.0.0.112 this problem can be solved)
Stopping a FFmpeg stream takes no time (FMLE takes up to 20 seconds)
Speegs  
#2 Posted : Thursday, January 22, 2015 4:09:59 AM(UTC)
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wwdv wrote:
I am just curious what your experiences are with FFmpeg.
There are not much topics in this forum about FFmpeg.
The experiences on other forums are sometimes a bit contradictory.

My experiences with FFmpeg:
Uses less cpu recources.
Audio sync is not stable (however with the new parameter 'Treads' in vMix 14.0.0.112 this problem can be solved)
Stopping a FFmpeg stream takes no time (FMLE takes up to 20 seconds)


I found more latecny with FFMpeg and went back to FMLE. It was substantially slowever about 3 seconds lag, same server, same everything. I may not have had FFMpeg tuned correctly. Did lower the CPU usage quite a bit however and of course has AAC built in with no extra plugin (I already own the FMLE plugin).
Speegs  
#3 Posted : Thursday, January 22, 2015 4:26:45 AM(UTC)
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I'm curious about FFMpeg and latency is my experience common that FFMpeg has higher streaming latency than FMLE, or was it just my setup that the latency was higher? Maybe there is some extra tuning for FFMpeg to improve the latency?
wwdv  
#4 Posted : Thursday, January 22, 2015 6:52:23 AM(UTC)
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I didn't notice any differences in latency, both approx. 5 seconds.
(may depend of your streaming provider)

The FFmpeg 'network buffer' setting doesn't have any visible affect.
Speegs  
#5 Posted : Saturday, January 24, 2015 7:53:39 AM(UTC)
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wwdv wrote:
I didn't notice any differences in latency, both approx. 5 seconds.
(may depend of your streaming provider)

The FFmpeg 'network buffer' setting doesn't have any visible affect.


I am my own streaming provider. So that is not the issue. Using the Wowza Media Server software (unless it somehow knows you switched encoder). The only change in my testing was FMLE to FFMPEG. Wowza claims they don't really care what encoder you use, it's just H.264 in server turns it into chunks and H.264 out. It does add a delay of course, but that appears to be about 1 second.
RaD  
#6 Posted : Thursday, April 2, 2015 9:44:46 PM(UTC)
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There seems to be about 0.5-0.7 seconds extra latency when using FFMPEG vs FMLE. The cpu usage is at least half though which is a nice gain. Typically our FFMLE stream is about 1.7 seconds latency. The cpu usage is about 59% though minimum on a quad core i7 which will bloat up to almost 80% and back (much higher and audio issues start with our USB audio capture). The FFMPEG seems to sit comfortably around 23-25% load. Usually we prefer lower latency over anything except quality but Im starting to think the lower cpu load will give us more room to increase usage as we grow.
davesuemcbride  
#7 Posted : Friday, April 3, 2015 7:16:35 PM(UTC)
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Can't say I've measured the two latencies that closely, but from feel anyway I'd say that ffmpeg is under 2 seconds.

Love the CPU savings though! One kink is that I can't get it to use more than about 30 percent though - I can configure a suite of 3 adaptive bitrates and even though the horsepower is there in reserve, it doesn't seem to get used and I get drops / errors instead. I was able to get past that immediate issue through overclocking, but wonder if there's settings / switches vMix could pass along that would allow for more CPU use?

Compression quality is very good under ffmpeg as well, subjectively anyway.
admin  
#8 Posted : Saturday, April 4, 2015 4:04:53 AM(UTC)
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To use more CPU resources when encoding, first make sure vMix 15 is installed, then from the Streaming Quality settings
increase the number of threads being used.

Regards,

Martin
vMix
david64  
#9 Posted : Monday, April 13, 2015 1:04:33 PM(UTC)
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I like FFMPEG's multiple streaming destination feature.
For me it seems FFMPEG has better picture quality, and uses less processor time. However the picture on the client is freezing in every 30 seconds for 3-4 seconds. FMLE does not do such thing.
I am sending the stream on LAN to wowza and I play it with vlc. Both computers (wowza & vMix) have i7 processor and the utilization is under 50%. I am using the latest vMix and wowza.

I've increased the number of threads as Martin suggested, first to 10 than 16 but it does not help.

Could you help what can be the problem?

Thank you!
davesuemcbride  
#10 Posted : Thursday, April 16, 2015 2:43:45 PM(UTC)
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david64 wrote:
I like FFMPEG's multiple streaming destination feature.
For me it seems FFMPEG has better picture quality, and uses less processor time. However the picture on the client is freezing in every 30 seconds for 3-4 seconds. FMLE does not do such thing.
I am sending the stream on LAN to wowza and I play it with vlc. Both computers (wowza & vMix) have i7 processor and the utilization is under 50%. I am using the latest vMix and wowza.

I've increased the number of threads as Martin suggested, first to 10 than 16 but it does not help.

Could you help what can be the problem?

Thank you!


Have you tried a different player? I use a similar setup with no issues playing HLS streams from Wowza for iOS and Roku, but in the past had numerous issues with VLC. Also, what key frame interval are you using? 2 seconds seems to be the common recommendation for this setup.
davesuemcbride  
#11 Posted : Saturday, April 18, 2015 1:45:52 PM(UTC)
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A couple of other thoughts:

- Take a look at the status dialog (reached via a button in vMix streaming settings dialog) and see if there's a drop in streaming altogether or a pattern of dropped frames. If not I'd think the streaming from vMix is working fine,

- There's a limit to how much thread count can help - I'd think a good rule of thumb would be one per core, i.e. four for a quad-core i7, with six being a maximum if you had to,

- From memory, VLC uses RTSP to open streams. I've had issues before ingesting RTSP streams served from Wowza, i.e. via a 'Stream' input in vMix, whereas opening via RTMP ('Flash' input in vMix) would work fine. Being as I use RTSP / 'Stream' from other devices in vMix with good results, I'd suspect it's something in how Wowza serves them, and this may be impacting VLC as well. I had workarounds in both cases so I haven't pursued it further, but maybe there's threads on Wowza's forums that may help.

Are there still issues with fewer streams being encoded or at smaller resolutions? That will help narrow the 'CPU capacity vs. protocol' question.

David
wwdv  
#12 Posted : Thursday, August 4, 2016 2:07:27 PM(UTC)
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We are a few vMix versions ahead with improved FFMPEG settings.
Is FMLE obsolated or does it still has adventages with respect to FFMPEG?

What I found:

FFMPEG uses less CPU than FMLE
FMLE has less latency than FMLE
FFMPEG has better quality than FMLE
FFMPEG saves the stream file so it records automatically in stream quality
FMLE is more stable at bad connections.

Are these also your experiences and what are the best FFMPEG settings in vMix?

NiBTour  
#13 Posted : Friday, August 5, 2016 2:03:52 AM(UTC)
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wwdv wrote:
We are a few vMix versions ahead with improved FFMPEG settings.
Is FMLE obsolated or does it still has adventages with respect to FFMPEG?

What I found:

FFMPEG uses less CPU than FMLE
FMLE has less latency than FMLE
FFMPEG has better quality than FMLE
FFMPEG saves the stream file so it records automatically in stream quality
FMLE is more stable at bad connections.

Are these also your experiences and what are the best FFMPEG settings in vMix?



I agree with everything above but have not noticed FMLE being more stable when using a "bad" connection. Then again I might not have had the bad connection that would show this to be true. I use FFMPEG 100% due to allowing me to use multiple bit rates which from my understanding or not via the vMix interface anyway can do.

-King
wwdv  
#14 Posted : Friday, September 23, 2016 11:14:36 AM(UTC)
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Since I replaced my graphics card by a GTX750ti and enabled FFMPEG hardware encoding, I experienced a interrupted stream a few times, the stream was continued automatically.

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