Audio randomly gets disabled after latest changes to webrtcbin

[ehfd]

Because the option to turn on and off audio was removed, it is expected that audio should always be on.

However, the audio goes off randomly.

It could be because we should check that both audio and video WebRTC streams, as well as the RTCDataChannel, are all connected before we declare the connection is established successfully. There is a possibility that this was omitted in the latest commits.

This has been reproduced by myself and a user who has reported the issue to me.

The metrics menu may, but not necessarily show the following:

Audio Stats
Latency: 0 ms
Codec: NA
Bit rate: 0.00 kbps

[ehfd]

This issue has been tagged as Urgent.

@danisla

[ehfd]

I believe that this issue is because the audio and video WebRTC elements do not cross-check that both protocols have been connected successfully.

[danisla]

How do you reproduce this?

[ehfd]

@danisla Try to reload the web interface multiple times. Especially from a non-local connection passing through the internet. It's not guaranteed to happen every time, but I have at least one other user reproducing this.

The core problem is that the current code seemingly does not ensure that both WebRTC streams are established before exposing the web interface to the user.

[ehfd]

Audio Stats
Latency: 0 ms
Codec: NA
Bit rate: 0.00 kbps

It seems like this is shown even when audio is active. Stats are not shown.

[ehfd]

@Xosrov Could I ask how you solved this problem?

[Xosrov]

Hey, I don't recall such an issue, but I did have a look at the new source code and I notice something:

if audio_only:
    self.build_audio_pipeline()
else:
    self.build_video_pipeline()

This implies the start_pipeline function is called twice; once for video and once for audio. Am I getting this right? If so, the self.pipeline object is being modified and that could cause the signaling process to be disturbed. There needs to be more logging to know for sure, though.

The way I had implemented it was to first preroll the capturing + encoding + packetizing pipeline, then attach and sync a specific webrtcbin to the already running pipeline, which In my experience made initializing the stream a lot faster.

Some other things (unrelated to this topic,) that you could consider adding to POSSIBLY improve the whole stream experience:

• Activating all available header extensions for audio and video. these do show up in the resulting SDP, but I haven't tested if they have noticeable effect.
• Since there are two webrtcbins now, I would enable NACK on both. I'm not sure why you're doing it here; as the if-statement implies you only use it for one and not both?
• I also used to enable FEC specifically in audio streams, but again I haven't tested to see if they have an effect on audio quality.

I hope this helps.

[ehfd]

Thanks for the massive help. @Xosrov
While I'm busy dealing with other things, I'll make sure to bake your suggestions into the code.

[ehfd]

• Since there are two webrtcbins now, I would enable NACK on both. I'm not sure why you're doing it here; as the if-statement implies you only use it for one and not both?
• I also used to enable FEC specifically in audio streams, but again I haven't tested to see if they have an effect on audio quality.

Applied these two things in 6d16d00.
Let's see if fixing #131 is the core thing, though.

[ehfd]

I understand that this is the same issue as #131. Please reopen if there are additional issues.

[ehfd]

There is still an issue where one should ensure both WebRTC (video, audio) streams are connected before the start button is shown, and the reload button should be shown after failure in either of the two streams.

[ehfd]

Please reopen if there are additional issues.