1.. _players:
2
3
4Players
5=======
6
7Transport modes
8---------------
9
10There are three different modes of transporting the stream to the player.
11
12====================== =========================================================
13Name                   Description
14====================== =========================================================
15Standard input pipe    This is the default behaviour when there are no other
16                       options specified.
17Named pipe (FIFO)      Use the :option:`--player-fifo` option to enable.
18HTTP                   Use the :option:`--player-http` or
19                       :option:`--player-continuous-http` options to enable.
20====================== =========================================================
21
22
23Player compatibility
24--------------------
25
26This is a list of video players and their compatibility with the transport
27modes.
28
29===================================================== ========== ========== ====
30Name                                                  Stdin Pipe Named Pipe HTTP
31===================================================== ========== ========== ====
32`Daum Pot Player <http://potplayer.daum.net>`_        No         No         Yes [1]_
33`MPC-HC <http://mpc-hc.org/>`_                        Yes [2]_   No         Yes [1]_
34`MPlayer <http://mplayerhq.hu>`_                      Yes        Yes        Yes
35`MPlayer2 <http://mplayer2.org>`_                     Yes        Yes        Yes
36`mpv <http://mpv.io>`_                                Yes        Yes        Yes
37`QuickTime <http://apple.com/quicktime>`_             No         No         No
38`VLC media player <http://videolan.org>`_             Yes [3]_   Yes        Yes
39===================================================== ========== ========== ====
40
41.. [1] :option:`--player-continuous-http` must be used.
42       Using HTTP with players that rely on Windows' codecs to access HTTP
43       streams may have a long startup time since Windows tend to do multiple
44       HTTP requests and Livestreamer will attempt to open the stream for each
45       request.
46.. [2] Stdin requires MPC-HC 1.7 or newer.
47
48.. [3] Some versions of VLC might be unable to use the stdin pipe and
49       prints the error message::
50
51            VLC is unable to open the MRL 'fd://0'
52
53       Use one of the other transport methods instead to work around this.
54
55
56Known issues and workarounds
57----------------------------
58
59MPC-HC reports "File not found"
60^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
61Upgrading to version 1.7 or newer will solve this issue since reading data
62from standard input is not supported in version 1.6.x of MPC-HC.
63
64MPC-HC only plays sound on Twitch streams
65^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
66Twitch sometimes returns badly muxed streams which may confuse players. The
67following workaround was contributed by MPC-HC developer @kasper93:
68
69    *To fix this problem go to options -> internal filters -> open splitter
70    settings and increase "Stream Analysis Duration" this will let ffmpeg to
71    properly detect all streams.*
72
73Using :option:`--player-passthrough hls <--player-passthrough>` has also been
74reported to work.
75
76MPlayer tries to play Twitch streams at the wrong FPS
77^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
78This is a bug in MPlayer, using the MPlayer fork `mpv <http://mpv.io>`_ instead
79is recommended.
80
81VLC hangs when buffering and no playback starts
82^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
83Some versions of 64-bit VLC seem to be unable to read the stream created by
84rtmpdump. Using the 32-bit version of VLC might help.
85
86