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[JGT]

I regularly listen to internet radio via MediaCenter. My goto station is JB Radio2 (https://jb-radio.net/Home) as it's a high quality FLAC stream playing an eclectic mix of music.

Anyway, JB Radio2 recently changed their streaming URL (https://mediacp.jb-radio.net:8001/flac) and since then every time a song finishes MC goes into "Buffering..." and never restarts. I can manually stop and restart the stream and all is good again until the current songs ends, and then MC stops again.

I am running the latest version of MC (33.0.60) on 64 bit Windows.

So is this a JB Radio2 problem? Or is MC not handling the stream correctly? I should add that there are no issues during the playback of each track - it only at the end of a track (or perhaps the start of the next track?) that the problem occurs.

Unfortunately I can see no way of contacting JB Radio2 from their web site so I can't contact them for any information.

Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks.

[terrym@tassie]

Confirmed the behavior you describe on MC33.0.68 with the JB flac stream, however the 320kbps aac stream JB output plays OK (https://mediacp.jb-radio.net:8001/aac).
The main difference is the flac stream contains metadata but Media Center isn't updating the metadata when the track changes or if the stream is restarted.

I've attached a log of the aac stream playing multiple tracks OK and a log of the flac stream playing one track and then having to be stopped because it goes into an endless buffering loop. This may give the MC devs something to work with.

VLC plays the flac stream (https://mediacp.jb-radio.net:8001/flac) OK.

[JGT]

Many thanks for looking into and confirming that.

Yes - I've noticed that the metadata is not displayed for JB Radio.

I'll listen to the aac stream from now on but would be nice if this was resolved at some stage 

[terrym@tassie]

A bit more info that may highlight what the problem is:

Playing the flac stream using ffplay in debug mode shows the following at every track change (highlighted by all caps note):

Code: [Select]

[AVFilterGraph @ 0000015ea37c6b80] query_formats: 2 queried, 3 merged, 0 already done, 0 delayed
[flac @ 0000015ea3695040] skipping flac header packet 1  0B
[flac @ 0000015ea3764980] skipping vorbis comment sq=    0B          NOTE: TRACK CHANGE
[flac @ 0000015ea37b9740] skipping flac header packet 1  0B
[flac @ 0000015ea3737c00] skipping vorbis comment sq=    0B           NOTE: TRACK CHANGE
In comparison the aac stream played in ffplay debug mode shows:

Code: [Select]

[AVFilterGraph @ 000001ccf4473940] query_formats: 2 queried, 0 merged, 3 already done, 0 delayed
[auto_aresample_0 @ 000001ccf4470680] [SWR @ 000001ccf449efc0] Using fltp internally between filters
[auto_aresample_0 @ 000001ccf4470680] ch:2 chl:stereo fmt:fltp r:44100Hz -> ch:2 chl:stereo fmt:s16 r:44100Hz
Created 640x480 texture with SDL_PIXELFORMAT_ARGB8888.
Transform tree:
    rdft_r2c_float_c - type: rdft_float, len: 1024, factors[2]: [4, any], flags: [unaligned, inplace, out_of_place, fwd_only]
        fft_sr_float_avx2 - type: fft_float, len: 512, factor: 2, flags: [aligned, out_of_place]
[https @ 000001cce97ef100] Metadata update for StreamTitle: Colin Hay - Oh California            NOTE: TRACK CHANGE
[https @ 000001cce97ef100] Metadata update for StreamTitle: Taj Mahal - Here In The Dark      NOTE: TRACK CHANGE

I think the flac header and vorbis comments that ffplay skips to continue playing the stream may be causing the hang and buffer loop in MC33.

I've attached the full ffplay debug outputs for the flac and aac streams as text files FYI.

[JGT]

Thanks for your further work on this Terry.

Do you know if this auto-magically get put on the MC backlog? Or do I have to notify someone? Or something??

[JimH]

It's been reported. 

[JGT]

Thanks Jim!

[terrym@tassie]

Found a quick workaround so you can keep listening to the flac stream on JB radio via MC33.

Tools>Options>FileTypes>FLAC Audio, change playback method from 'Automatic' to either: 'JRiver audio engine (using FFmpeg)' or 'JRiver audio engine (using DirectShow filter)'

Happy listening

Edit: Problem seems to be with the flac input plug-in, MC33 does read the Vorbis comments as they show up in the 'Tag Dump' field in the Tag window (if the view is refreshed after a track change) they can be used to update the Playing Now info if 'Update library from tags' is invoked (happens really slowly though).

[JGT]

That works! Excellent - Thanks for that.