How to reduce initial channel load times

smshapiro85

Hello! Absolutely love ErsatzTV.

Loading a new channel takes approximately 10-12 seconds, which is not terrible, but I am wondering if there are any best practices or recommendations for reducing this load time.

Ersatztv does seem to keep a nice channel cache, so if I switch to another channel, and then switch back, the channel loads right away, but initial channel load times are a little lengthy ATM.

Using the MacOS binary, v 0.8.4, ffmpeg v 6.0, media on a synology NAS. Using HLS Segmenter and here is my ffmpeg profile:

smshapiro85

Bump! Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

wallsy1703

10-12 seconds does seem quite lengthy compared to my own experiences....
Every setup is different, so to gain a better understanding, it would be best to provide the following....
The Hardware specs for both the server and client machines?
The applications used for playback?
Top level overview of the network path it's taking? ie ethernet, wifi, speeds etc.

smshapiro85

Thank you Wallsy.

Server: Mac M1, running v0.8.4-beta-osx-arm64

Media: Synology NAS, connected via ethernet as an SMB share

Client: AppleTV, connected via ethernet, using "IPTVX", however I have also tested this via VLC on my Mac that is connected via ethernet.

Client, Server and Synology are therefore all connected via ethernet via a ubiquti switch.

Can you share your ffmpeg profile? Also, are your media files connected to your server locally, or at least via an external hard drive? I guess I could try that next to see if there is a difference vs. the NAS.

wallsy1703

I'm also using AppleTVs (on wifi) and storage on a Synology..... I tried IPTVX myself a few years back, and whilst it was generally quite good, I still wasn't completely happy with it....

Differences on my profile is I have Bitrate set to 2000 and Buffer Size set to 4000 and hardware acceleration is Nvenc.

Other than those settings mentioned, I use MPEG-TS rather than HLS

Server is a custom built PC, so I use 3 out of the 4 LAN ports on the Synology directly in to the Server using multi-smb, so it's a direct connection / shares to Plex.

I will try your bitrate and buffer size to see what difference it makes on my setup.

wallsy1703

Altering my bitrate, buffer and from mpeg-ts to hls segmenter haven't made any noticeable difference. Have you tried changing hardware acceleration to none?

smshapiro85

Alright, tried changing the hardware acceleration but that didn't have any impact. I also tried mpeg-2 instead of h264 without video acceleration, and removing the "auto de-interlace video" setting but none of them had any impact.

Good news - It seems like updating to ffmpeg positively impacted load time, I am now for some reason getting 6-8 seconds load time instead of 10-12.