Poor HSL performance on HTML5 in Chrome
Dear colleagues,
We're using HLS to stream live events to JWPlayer 7.6.1. Since we're anticipating Google's and Mozilla's move to block Flash content in a near future, we're looking into how JWPlayer handles live live Adaptive Bitrates on HLS under HTML5 on those 2 browsers.
We're aware that JWPlayer development team is working on deploying HTML5 HLS to Firefox, so let's keep it out of this assessment.
Let's focus on Chrome. We've been extensively using live ABR HLS in Flash using JWPlayer, and it works very well, both when we change resolutions and when we toggle network constraints. Really nice.
Now, apparently HLS via HTML5 in Chrome is responding poorly when conditions (network and resolution) change. Instead of picking the proper stream, it keeps using the higher bitrate stream until it runs out of buffer. Eventually, it searches for the lower quality stream, but player is stopped long before it does that.
When conditions come back to "normal" (in which the highest quality is expected to be auto-chosen), that does not happen either. It keeps playing the lower quality rendition forever.
None of that happens with Flash HLS, playing the exact same m3u8 file.
The renditions of the video are being generated by Wowza Server using its default transcoding settings, with keyframes properly aligned.
My question to you is: is that behavior known to be happening? Any workarounds available?
Thanks in advance,
Helder Conde
helder.conde@atitude.com.br
