Current recommendation regarding fMP4-HLS setting?

[raulo1985]

Hi, I've only been using it since 10.10.9, but since then I've been having problems with DV and playback on my LG B4. I use the native WebOS App, and at first I always wondered why it defaults to HDR instead of Dolby Vision, until I noticed in some forum posts that I have to enable the two settings for fMP4-HLS in order to play DV. However, there are still some titles in my library that stutter a bit, sometimes from the beginning, sometimes only after 45 minutes. Since 10.11.3, I had to deactivate the fMP4-HLS setting again because otherwise nothing would play at all. Now it obviously works “out of the box",but unfortunately the stuttering remains. Really frustrating.

Yeah, fMP4-HLS is necessary for DV support and Webos native HLS player is known to be buggy with that container. The shorter segments settings mitigates the stuttering, but it persists (not much, but noticeable). And with fMP4-HLS disabled you lose DV support. You had to disable fMP4-HLS on 10.11.3 because JF-Web 10.11.2 was using hls.js in the case of WebOS, and that was reverted on 10.11.3 to the WebOS native player (which is known to be buggy when enabling fMP4-HLS).

My experience with my C1 has been a little weird with these settings, that's why I don't think it's a bad a idea to add a toggeable setting to enable or disable hls.js.

My experience so far with 10.11.3 - 10.11.4 (for context, I only have a few DV movies, so solving issues with DV is not a priority to me):

WebOS native HLS player:

- DV with fMP4-HLS enabled and shorter segments disabled: a lot of stuttering, not acceptable.
- DV with fMP4-HLS enabled and shorter segments enabled: less stuttering, but still present (and with higher bitrates it becomes not acceptable).
- Not DV with fMP4-HLS enabled and shorter segments disabled: little stuttering, some playback issues still present (mostly with fast forward).
- Not DV with fMP4-HLS enabled and shorter segments enabled: a little better, but still have fast forward issues.
- DV with fMP4-HLS disabled: fallback to HDR and, surprisingly (since it's the official recommendation for WebOS native HLS player), I have a lot of issues. Stuttering, infinite loading, and movies not loading at all or freezing.
- Not DV with fMP4-HLS disabled: same as before, a lot of issues.

hls.js (haven't tested with DV yet):

- fMP4-HLS enabled and shorter segments disabled: little stuttering, no playback issues.
- fMP4-HLS enabled and shorter segments enabled: my best setup. Almost no stuttering (only a little with high bitrate movies), no playback issues.
- fMP4-HLS disabled: a lot of issues, infinite loading, fast forward issues, and the movie freezes a lot.

So, in my case (C1), apparently no combination of settings can make the experience acceptable while using the WebOS native player, and disabling fMP4-HLS in my case doesn't solve anything (in fact, it makes it worse). Hls.js improves things a lot, and when I use it with both fMP4-HLS and shorter segments enabled, playback is smooth and haven't experienced freezing.

So, for now, since JF-Web code changed and now it uses native HLS player, I'm building from source to enable hls.js for WebOS. With the current release I haven't been able to solve the issues without using hls.js. Idk if there are many cases like this, but if that's the case a toggeable setting for enabling hls.js would be nice and some users like myself would bennefit from it.

I agree with the concept of trying to leave the least amount of technical settings to the user and have a good experience out of the box, but apparently with WebOS that won't be possible until they fix their player. Shorter segments is an example of a technical setting that couldn't be avoided because without it using fMP4-HLS causes a lot of stuttering, I don't see why the use of hls.js couldn't be another one just for WebOS. There are simply too many different setups with different behaviors, and with different results depending on those settings. Hopefully LG improves things, but I wouln't count on it for a while, and a good workaround could be leaving the choice of using hls.js or the native player to the user. Surely @timitt would agree with me on this one.

Just my experience, though.