mp4 video streaming: fast start up, but gets stuck...

Mon Feb 6 12:45:06 UTC 2017

Hello!

On Mon, Feb 06, 2017 at 12:43:24PM +0200, ST wrote:

> I have two mp4 files served by nginx: A ( https://goo.gl/lYGXjC ) and B
> ( https://goo.gl/ZsnX7M ). File A starts pretty fast ca. 2s and it
> buffers/caches "future" content, however to B it takes more than 6s and
> it doesn't seem to buffer/cache. However A gets stuck periodically which
> makes it impossible to view (probably when it fails to cache), while B
> plays nicely all the time. Here are my questions: 1. What makes A start
> up so fast? 2. Is it possible to have both - fast start AND stable
> playing? I have not encoded neither of the files but here is the ffmpeg
> -i output of both ( http://pastebin.com/SuwYZkWP ) and AtomicParsley -T
> of A ( http://pastebin.com/GRWJkqNy ) and B
> ( http://pastebin.com/YGq0HjCU ). If you need any additional
> information, please, let me know.

The obvious difference is 1.6M metadata in B (compared to 68k in A). 
I don't think there is anything nginx-related here, rather, you 
should look into encoding of both files.

-- 
Maxim Dounin
http://nginx.org/