How to Avoid Playback Errors with Stream Quality Monitoring

January 30, 2025

4minutes de lecture

Errors in incoming video streams are a major source of frustration for TV providers and content distributors everywhere. According to Flussonic telemetry, approximately one-third of sources experience network disruptions and transport-level issues.

As a result, every third channel suffers from glitches, latency problems, or audio-video desynchronization—issues that viewers immediately notice. When errors accumulate, subscribers begin contacting support and demanding urgent fixes. The provider must then determine whether the fault lies with the network, the source, or internal equipment. Only after identifying the cause can the problem be resolved.

Providers who manage numerous sources are at even greater risk of these issues. To avoid such headaches, it is essential to pinpoint the root cause of each error.

One of our clients, a TV, internet, and video surveillance operator, faced this problem. With the help of a Flussonic solution, they resolved 99% of problematic streams in just one week.

Errors Found in Every Second Source

The client had been experiencing frequent outages in both TV broadcasts and surveillance camera feeds. They processed several hundred incoming MPEG-TS streams through Flussonic servers, and nearly half of those streams showed pixelation (or macroblocking) as well as audio-video desynchronization.

Media Server logs flagged numerous errors, providing detailed event records crucial for technical support and server performance evaluation. However, understanding the broader patterns and root causes of issues required a quality analyzer with retrospective tracking capabilities.

Report Created Based on ETSI TR 101 290 Parameters

After reviewing the logs, Flussonic technical support recommended evaluating incoming MPEG-TS streams according to ETSI TR 101 290 standards. We set up metrics to monitor critical factors like transport errors, payload errors, timing disruptions, and desynchronization.

We then provided the client with a comprehensive, visual overview of the findings through graphs and heat maps.

Stream Analyzer

Our analysis revealed three main categories of issues:

  1. Network errors. Some sources showed sudden spikes in packet loss roughly every 30 minutes, indicating insufficient network bandwidth.
  2. Source errors. Certain suppliers sent streams with incorrect timestamps or flagged them as scrambled when they were not.
  3. Merged data issues. Audio and video were coming from different sources and fell out of sync, sometimes causing the audio track to disappear entirely.

Hundreds of Problematic Sources Reduced to Two in One Week

Once the client received our report, they were able to take swift action to correct the situation.

Many of the transport errors were traced to RTSP streams from surveillance cameras. These cameras were connected to the Media Server via a third-party video surveillance platform, which turned out to be the culprit. After rebooting that platform, the errors disappeared.

In the TV channel lineup, most recurring problems came from a single distributor. The client shared the detailed error report with this distributor, who then addressed and resolved the issues on their end within a week.

Consequently, the total number of errors dropped to almost zero. Although half of the sources had been reporting errors previously, only two channels still showed any issues after the fixes.

Streamlined Monitoring for All

The report’s visual presentation delivers both a broad overview of the system and the means to isolate problems in specific streams. This approach saves time spent diagnosing errors and clarifies which party is responsible for resolving them.

With a clear breakdown of issues, no one can dismiss the problem as simply “bad internet” or an “equipment malfunction.” The report provides evidence showing precisely where and why each error originated. As a result, content suppliers, operators, and engineers can base decisions on facts rather than speculation.

Below are some common causes of errors in MPEG-TS streams, as observed by Flussonic support:

  • Corrupted TV signals from a partner. Often, the source is unaware that it is transmitting streams with embedded errors. Furthermore, not all content suppliers provide redundancy, so there may be no alternative feed when severe incidents occur.
  • Underperforming neighborhood cameras and poor-quality surveillance equipment. Many providers do not have a dedicated technician overseeing camera feeds, so they fail to detect corrupted video in time.
  • Network errors. It is crucial to identify peak bandwidth overloads as well as seasonal traffic fluctuations, such as higher usage on Friday evenings.

Want to see which errors are affecting your sources? Reach out to our team.

Flussonic experts will assist you in generating a detailed report, initiating the analysis, and working toward a resolution. This approach helps optimize your time and resources while maintaining high service quality for both your subscribers and partners.

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