Browser Playback Timeout

2020-12-20 20:52:58

Here is a weird phenomenon I've encountered and don't have an explanation for.

I am running an icecast stream with Daniel's excellent program, BUTT. OS is Windows 10.

If I play my stream using a web browser (http://localhost:8000/stream), the audio plays just fine, but times out after about 2.5 hours of  play. The audio is still streaming because I can manually restart playback just by refreshing the browser. I have tried Chrome and Microsoft Edge and they both quit after a couple of hours.

I tried making an HTML5 web page which links to my stream — same thing. About 2.5 hours of uptime is all you get.

I have streamed on-line radio stations which bring up a built-in player and they play for hours and hours and do not time out. It's only when I play my icecast stream that it times out.

I don't know anything about these online players the radio stations use. They may be a creation of the streaming service Triton.

I have tried playing my local stream with Foobar 2000 and have gotten over 48 hours of uptime.

What gives?

Re: Browser Playback Timeout

Reply #1 – 2020-12-21 19:04:50

I was going to suggest that there was a kill time setup for listeners on the icecast server, but sure that would have also applied for foobar2000 as well, so I don't have a clue of what it could be.

Re: Browser Playback Timeout

Reply #2 – 2020-12-21 19:11:16

I checked the icecast.xml file. There are a couple of time limits but nothing that would cause a stream to halt after around 2.5 hours.

I could try running a different browser and see what happens.

(MINUTES LATER)

I'm playing the audio stream on the Opera browser now. Let's see how long it plays.

Re: Browser Playback Timeout

Reply #3 – 2020-12-21 23:11:49

I tried playing my audio stream in the Opera browser and sure enough, it stopped after 2:49:22, similar to the other two browsers I've tried.

BUTT says it is still streaming. When I click on the "play" arrow on the web page, the audio starts right back up, suggesting that the problem is with the player and not the outgoing stream.

Re: Browser Playback Timeout

Reply #4 – 2020-12-22 17:44:07

The timeouts occur when I play a FLAC or Opus stream.

As an experiment, I tried playing an mp3 stream and so far have had 11 hours of play time, much longer than the others.

Weird.

Re: Browser Playback Timeout

Reply #5 – 2020-12-22 19:05:37

Mmmm.. now I realize that you actually tried the "same browser" (Microsoft Edge, Opera and Chrome are all now based on Chromium).
Could it be a bug in the <audio> HTML 5 tag implementation?  Affecting only some codecs.

Let's try with Mozilla. (I guess IE11 won't be able to, but you might try)

Re: Browser Playback Timeout

Reply #6 – 2020-12-22 21:15:28

Playback quits after 2+ hours on FLAC and Opus streams when the stream is addressed directly within the browser: http://localhost:8000/stream. With or without HTML5, the audio plays for 2+ hours before the player pauses.

I didn't realize Chrome, Edge and Opera are all based on Chromium, so maybe that is where the bug is and it gives me a clue where to address a bug report. I will try Firefox later.

Re: Browser Playback Timeout

Reply #7 – 2020-12-23 17:12:33

Firefox does not seem to have this timeout problem.