San Francisco, CA Stream Stuttering

[kandrey89]

Is anyone else hearing the audio stuttering on the stream from San Francisco Public Safety - SFPD/SFFD stream?

San Francisco County, California (CA) Live Police, Fire, and EMS Scanners on RadioReference.com

This started about 00:00 on Sunday, maybe a bit earlier.

I checked other feeds in case it was my computer playing problem, other Bay Area feeds play fine, on the same page. Restarted my computer, no difference. Also plays fine for other streams. Tried Winamp, same stuttering broadcast for SF Public Safety.

Funny thing is that it plays fine for a few seconds and then begins to stutter, and the stuttering isn't continuous, its not linear either. Feels like its an encoding issue with VBR, when someone speaks for a long time on the radio, like for more than a second, this stuttering becomes louder and causes more pauses in between. When the stream is silent, and someone starts talking again its clear for a tiny moment as the stuttering begins to build up.

I'd suggest the owner check the computer, possible memory, internet connection, or software glitches causing stream malfunction stuttering.

 

[richtidd]

Is anyone else hearing the audio stuttering on the stream from San Francisco Public Safety - SFPD/SFFD stream?

San Francisco County, California (CA) Live Police, Fire, and EMS Scanners on RadioReference.com

This started about 00:00 on Sunday, maybe a bit earlier.

I checked other feeds in case it was my computer playing problem, other Bay Area feeds play fine, on the same page. Restarted my computer, no difference. Also plays fine for other streams. Tried Winamp, same stuttering broadcast for SF Public Safety.

Funny thing is that it plays fine for a few seconds and then begins to stutter, and the stuttering isn't continuous, its not linear either. Feels like its an encoding issue with VBR, when someone speaks for a long time on the radio, like for more than a second, this stuttering becomes louder and causes more pauses in between. When the stream is silent, and someone starts talking again its clear for a tiny moment as the stuttering begins to build up.

I'd suggest the owner check the computer, possible memory, internet connection, or software glitches causing stream malfunction stuttering.

The feed owner knows of the situation.

 

[kandrey89]

Grrrrrrr, I'm kind of annoyed to listening to a feeds that's doing this, but I just want to listen to the dispatch so badly...

Good that the owner knows, hope its fixed soon, and glad it's not a problem on my end.

BTW, is this an intermittent problem, or did this problem just appear? Also, what causes problems like this usually in your experience?

 

[trooperdude]

Remember feed providers are VOLUNTEERS.

There are many QOS issues that are out of our control like bandwidth shaping routers used by ISP's to control throughput by assigning packet priority, etc.

 

[kandrey89]

I've never heard of QoS making any kinds of problems on a connection that has enough bandwidth and isn't being clogged by the user himself. I do have some experience with broadcasting, as part of teamspeak, as well as shoutcast and music radio. Its not a lot, but its enough to know how the system is usually setup.

Usually the feeder send his traffic to the server, in this case RR, and then RR retranslates the feed to all the awaiting listeners, this way the feeder's connection isn't clogged because all the listeners are feeding off a powerful server hub with a good connection, probably a what here? 100mbit? Maybe 10mbit if it's USA server

 

[PeterGV]

Is this feed running ScannerCast? If it is, it would be running a VERY old version (like, from July).

The reason I ask is that I've seen this happen on ScannerCast. Restarting the stream fixes the problem.

I've seen it on my own personal feeds (both public and private), and I've been chasing the bug down for months. What makes it hard to find and fix is that sometimes it doesn't happen at all, and when it does happen it takes weeks to occur.

I *have* seen it "fix itself" also... which is strange.

In fact, I spent several hours working on this problem this weekend... and while I *did* find a tiny and obscure bug in the audio buffering, I'm not at all confident it's THE bug.

Peter
K1PGV

 

[PeterGV]

I also notice that the stream in question is running at 24Kbps (not the usual RR rate of 16Kbps)... I run my private stream at 24Kbps also... I'm wondering if that somehow makes the problem more likely.

Peter
K1PGV

 

[kandrey89]

ZOMG, I think it just got fixed
Don't hear any more stuttering, YAY
Like literally in the last 10 mins