Hi,
I have performed some tests with version 1.6.4.2677 and I "kind of" reproduce the bug you have described here. The quotes are because I did manage to crash VLC and some weird results with avplay/ffplay
So, here is what I have done:
1. Start EMS
2. Start FMLE in h264/aac configuration, publishing a simple 320×240 video
3. made that multicast push exactly as you did
4. Started vlc and tuned into that multicast ip:port at step 3. Everything worked
5. re-started FMLE with a long and than with a short pause. Both times VLC picked the stream playback just fine
6. re-started FMLE but this time I also modified the video from 320×240 to 640×480
7. VLC resumed the audio playback while the screen suddenly got grey. VLC crashed few seconds later (I assume on the first key frame)
8. Started VLC again and tuned it back on that multicast address. It played back just fine
My current conclusion is that VLC gets confused by the sudden codecs updates inside a stream. Why? I don’t know. I believe is a bug in VLC.
Now, after VLC, I’ve done the same identical experiment but replaced VLC with avplay. I replicated your bug: audio was fine, but the video was showing me a frozen frame from the long gone previous stream.
And, finally, tried with ffplay. ffplay resumed the playback as expected. However, the playback was something like 3-4 fps, despite the fact that EMS was pumping out a full 30 fps (checked with wireshark)
On both ffplay and avplay I have observed some weird output regarding the timestamps on FMLE re-connect. And that (kind of) makes sense. the output TS stream will exit EMS at 0-based timestamps every time. On restart, the player knows that he must playback from a certain position (duration of the previous session playback length). The moment it sees timestamps in the past, I guess it ignores them except audio!? Since FMLE always starts the publish from 0-based timestamp, that is confusing the players on re-connect.
Please give us more details about the guts of your players. Do they use ffmpag/libav internally?
Best regards,
Andrei