Stream tester

Stream tester is a tool to test Livepeer network performance and stability. It sends RTMP streams into broadcaster nodes and download back transcoded data and calculates success rate. It can be used as standalone command line tool or as part of test harness. As part of test harness, it works in server mode, inside docker image, and is controlled through REST interface.

Also it can be used to pull arbitrary .m3u8 stream and save it to disk.

When running from command line, Stream tester has two different modes. First one is for (load) testing Livepeer Broadcaster and second one was developed for running long test against Livepeer Wowza plugin, but can be used with any transcoder that takes RTMP input and output HLS.

Binaries

Automatically built binaries can be found on releases page.

Video test files

• official_test_source_2s_keys_24pfs.mp4

• official_test_source_2s_keys_24pfs_3min.mp4

• bbb_sunflower_1080p_30fps_normal_t02.mp4

• bbb_sunflower_1080p_30fps_normal_1min.mp4

Command line

If name of the file to stream is not specified, then default one - official_test_source_2s_keys_24pfs.mp4 is used. It should be placed in the same directory as Stream Tester. Can be downloaded from here.

All options can be put into config file and used like

./streamtester -config local.cfg

Config file example: local.cfg

Load testing mode

Streams file to its end, or for the time specified. Can stream arbitrary number of streams simultaneously and repeat streaming any number of times. Counts number of segments streamed and number of segments that was readed back. Reports success rate (readed segments / segments should have been readed). Calculate transcode latency (should be enabled from command line).

Usage:

./streamtester -host localhost -rtmp 1935 -media 8935 -profiles 2 -repeat 1 -sim 1 -file file_to_stream.mp4

Params:

• -host Host name of broadcaster to stream to
• -media-host Host name to read transcoded stream from. If not specified, -host will be used
• -rtmp Port number to stream RTMP stream to
• -media Port number to download media from
• -profiles How many transcoding profiles broadcaster configured with
• -sim How many simultaneous streams stream into broadcaster
• -repeat How many times to repeat streaming
• -latency Measure transcoding latency
• -time Time to stream streams (40s, 4m, 24h45m). Not compatible with repeat option
• -http-ingest Use HTTP push instead of RTMP
• -file Name of the file to stream

Infinite stream testing mode

In this mode Stream Tester streams video to RTMP ingest point and read HLS stream back. Streaming is stopped only on error, so it will be infinite if transcoding is done ideally.

Errors can be reported to Discord.

Checks downloaded segments for validity by parsing them using joy4 lib. Can save segments with errors to Google Storage.

Checks for gaps in HLS stream (PTS of the first frame of the segment should be PTS of first frame of previous segment plus length of previous segment).

Checks for time drift between transcoded streams (At each given time, PTSs of first segments in different media streams shouldn't differ for more than four seconds. (Apple's HLS validator tool report error if difference is more than two seconds)).

Stops streaming if there is no new segments in HLS stream for a 30 seconds.

Usage:

./streamtester -ignore-time-drift \
  -ignore-gaps -wowza -wait-for-target 150s \
  -media-url http://site.com:1935/something.m3u8 \
  -rtmp-url rtmp://site.com:1935/something \
  -profiles 3 \
  -file file_to_stream.mp4

Params:

• -wowza Should be specified if streaming to Wowza. Removes Wowza's session cookies from manifest names
• -rtmp-url URL to stream RTMP stream to
• -media-url URL of main .m3u8 manifest to pull transcoded stream back from
• -profiles How many transcoded (not including source) profiles should be in resulting (.m3u8) stream
• ignore-no-codec-error Do not stop streaming if segment without codec's info downloaded
• ignore-gaps Do not stop streaming if gaps found
• ignore-time-drift Do not stop streaming if time drift detected
• wait-for-target Timeout for trying to connect to RTMP ingest host. Should be specified in seconds or minutes (10s, 4m)
• discord-url URL of Discord's webhook to send messages to Discord channel
• discord-users Id's of users to notify in case of failure
• discord-user-name User name to use when sending messages to Discord
• gsbucket Google Storage bucket (to store segments that was not successfully parsed)
• gskey Google Storage private key (in json format (actual key, not file name))
• -file Name of the file to stream

Infinite HLS pull testing mode

In this mode Stream Tester pulls arbitrary HLS stream and runs same checks as in previous mode. To use it specify -media-url without specifying -rtmp-url.

Saving arbitrary stream to file

Running

./streamtester -save -infinite-pull http://site.com:1935/live/main_playlist.m3u8

will save pull main_playlist.m3u8 stream and save all the segments along with (VOD) manifests to current directory.

Server mode

Run

./streamtester -server -serverAddr localhost:7934

This command block until interrupted.

It provide these REST endpoints:

---

GET /stats?latencies&base_manifest_id=basemanifestid

if optional parameter latencies present, /stats will return raw latencies values if optional parameter base_manifest_id present, then stats will be filtered by that base manifest id

returns object:

{
    "rtmp_active_streams": 1,
    "rtmp_streams": 1,
    "media_streams": 1,
    "sent_segments": 3,
    "downloaded_segments": 7,
    "should_have_downloaded_segments": 9,
    "failed_to_download_segments": 0,
    "bytes_downloaded": 2721864,
    "success_rate": 77.77777777777779,
    "connection_lost": 0,
    "start_time": "2020-01-07T21:59:51.008881+02:00",
    "finished": false,
    "raw_source_latencies": [79210696, 87020114],
    "raw_transcoded_latencies": [298718923, 324982522]
}

Where

• rtmp_active_streams - number of streams is being currently streamed
• rtm_pstreams - total number of RTMP streams (active plus finished)
• rtm_pstreams - total number of media streams (downloading back segments)
• sent_segments - total number of segments sent to broadcaster
• downloaded_segments - total number of segments downloaded back
• should_have_downloaded_segments - number of segments should be downloaded back for 100% success rate. It equals sent_segments * (numberOfTranscodingProfiles + 1)
• failed_to_download_segments - number of segments failed to download with some error
• bytes_downloaded - number of bytes downloaded
• success_rate - success rate, percent
• connection_lost - number of times streamer lost connection to broadcaster. Streamer does not attempt to reconnect, so statistics will only have data till connection was lost
• finished - indicates that all streaming tasks are finished

---

POST /start_streams

Accepts object:

{
    "host": "localhost",
    "media_host": "",
    "file_name": "official_test_source_2s_keys_24pfs.mp4",
    "rtmp": 1935,
    "media": 8935,
    "repeat": 1,
    "simultaneous": 1,
    "profiles_num": 2,
    "do_not_clear_stats": false,
    "measure_latency": true,
    "http_ingest": false
}

file_name - should exists in local filesystem of streamer. do_not_clear_stats - if true, on new call to /start_streams do not clear old stats, but instead append to it

Returns

{
    "success": true,
    "base_manifest_id": "manifest_id_here"
}

Can return 404 if request contains wrong parameters.

---

GET /stop

Stop currently running streams.

Doesn't return any data, only status 200