Audio desynchronized with video.

[tfabris]

Currently the audio stream is desynchronized from the video stream. The audio is several seconds earlier than the video.

To do:

• Confirm the origins of the problem. Define if the issue is coming in from the camera itself, Synology, or the YouTube portion of the stream. Each is testable with the equivalent of a clapboard test. View on the Reolink app to see the Camera, and view in Surveillance Station timeline for the Synology. If both of those are good then it's YouTube streaming fault.
• See if reducing the stream back down to 1080p (instead of 1440p as it is currently) will fix the issue. It is possible the problem started when we went to 1440p.
• See if increasing the bytes bandwidth on the camera fixes the issue.

[tfabris]

Reduced stream resolution from 1440p to 1296p.

Fixed the problem while still keeping a pretty nice sharpness increase above 1080p. Youtube only displays a 1080p stream, but it's sharper now since the source image is 1296p.

Why it delays the audio at 1440p I don't know, but I also don't care any more, so, closing issue.

[tfabris]

Still getting occasional situations where the audio is desynched from the video. Not every day, but some days. Example is 2019-04-16 9:40am - Crow scolds squirrel and the scolding is not synched up with the video.

To do: Try switching back down to 1080p and see if the problem goes away.

[tfabris]

Note: Checked the timestamp mentioned above (2019-04-16 9:40am) - Desynchronization issue was in the YouTube live stream DVR scrollback, but not in the Synology Surveillance Station hard copy. Jury is still out as to if it's in the archive on YouTube or not (not done processing yet).

[tfabris]

Desynchronization still exists when I set the camera feed to 1080p (from the camera controls), so 1080p doesn't actually solve the camera issue. With regard to the 2019-04-16 9:40am archive, the jury is still out (not done processing yet).

[tfabris]

A helpful tip in this thread says: https://telestreamforum.forumbee.com/t/h46z5j/youtube-stream-audio-out-of-sync:

"I've not noticed audio out of sync during the live stream, but when YouTube processes the video for playback, audio 4-5 seconds out of sync. Everything seemed fine until about 3-4 weeks ago.

To set the YouTube recorded video back into sync (has worked 9/10 times) I've been going to Edit>Audio>Revert to original .... takes a bit to process, but seems to re-sync the audio."

[tfabris]

Updates:

• The final archive version of the video on YouTube continues to include the out-of-sync audio.
• The helpful tip in the thread is not applicable to my streaming situation, I can't find the menu option, it must be an option found in a different piece of software.
• Reducing the stream to 1080p did not fix the issue so I went back up to 1296p.

To do:

• Experiment with different streaming settings on the camera and on the Synology if possible. Perhaps increase the streaming bandwidth again (up from the current 2mpbs bandwidth) to see if it makes it better.

[tfabris]

There are no audio options to change, either on the camera or on the Synology camera software. The options are either "AAC Audio" or "Off". So we're stuck with that.

Trying

• Upping streaming bandwidth to 3mbps.
• Video at 1296p (camera) 1080p (Synology)
• Frame rate is dropped from 25 to 22.

Note: Frame rate is default 25 on the camera itself but the Synology does not have a 25 option, it only has 30 or 22. I'm trying setting both of them to 22 so that they have a match, to see if that fixes the desynch issue.

[tfabris]

None of the above worked. Audio on YouTube is still desynchronized from the video.

To do:

• Put the frame rate settings and back and think about what else you can do.

Trying now, before putting the frame rate settings back:

• Rebooting the camera from the reolink app, to force the stream to restart. Does this force the stream to re-synch? Time of reboot: 2019-04-19 10:22am.

[tfabris]

Rebooting the camera did in fact work:

• On that same day, 2019-04-19, at 11:06 am, after the reboot, a crow arrived and their sound was perfectly in synch. Whereas, before the reboot, a squirrel visit and 8:39 and a crow visit at 9:40 were desychronized.

Other notes:

• The stream never fully reset, the hysteresis worked and the stream just came back up without the script resetting the stream. So it was just a pure camera reboot that fixed it.

To do:

• Investigate to see if it stays in synch all day on the 2019-04-19 stream, or if the audio drifts over time after the 10:22am reboot. View the archive of the stream on 2019-04-19 and see how it does later in the day (assuming you get any late-day visitors, you usually do).
• See if you can reboot the camera scriptingly. The camera has a localhost web UI, maybe it's a simple as a curl or wget call to the right URL.
• Maybe we just need to reboot the camera once, shortly before the start of our broadcast day. We already have timing stuff in the script which could handle this.
• Look at the archivve of the feed on 2019-04-19 and see if the "click" of the IR lights turning off is synched or not. In other words, did the camera start its day desynched? Perhaps we just need to bounce the camera before flipping the stream to go live in the morning.
• Maybe the problem is Synology Surveillance Station desynchronizing the broadcast stream (I mean, they have other proven bugs too, why not this one as well?). If that's the case, maybe we need to start the stream in the morning, let it spool up, and THEN bounce the camera. In other words, only bounce the camera while the stream is alive, not before.

[tfabris]

After the 10:22am reboot on 2019-04-19, there was a 3:17pm squirrel visit which was more or less synch'd. At most the audio was off by just a small fraction of a second, which is usually the best I can hope for with this system. So the camera reboot seems to fix the issue. So experiment with whether you can reboot the camera from its web interface after turning on the stream.

[tfabris]

I returned the resolution and frame rate settings back to their prior settings on the morning of Monday 2019-04-22. Currently they are at: 1296p/25fps camera. 1080p/30fps YouTube stream.

To do:

• Continue to observe and look for sound/video synch problems after making these changes.
• See if the issue recurs frequently.
• If not frequent, maybe fix it with manual camera reboots when it occurs but don't worry about an automated solutino.

[tfabris]

Issue continues to recur intermittently. For instance I noticed it on 2019-04-27.

I went to investigate the reboot options and I noticed that the camera already has an auto-reboot feature built into itself. And I've already got it set to 3:30 am, the same time the LAN reboots.

Trying this now:

• Auto-Reboot the camera on its own built-in scheduler feature, and you already do it, but do it at 5am instead of rebooting the same time as the LAN. Maybe it's the coincidental timing of the LAN reboot that confuses the camera.

[tfabris]

To do:

• Update the 5 am camera reboot to be more like 4:30 am. In our geographic location, sunrise can be as early as 5am at the height of summer.
• Check if there are firmware updates for the camera (Not at this time, last update was August 2018).
• See if you get any recurrences of the audio desynchronization after that.

[tfabris]

Since the last post about this (10:50 am 2019-04-28) I changed the camera auto reboot time. Also the camera has been rebooted to take care of other issues too. We've had good audio sync during all of this time. I've looked at video from 04/28 04/29 04/30 and 05/01 and the audio has been in sync.

My working theory is that, because I was bouncing the camera and bouncing the network at the exact same time of day, something was getting messed up. Now I am bouncing the camera an hour after the network bounces, and this seems to be working to keep video/audio in sync.

Closing this bug until I see a desynchronization again.

[tfabris]

On 2019-05-06 at 5:32 am there was a crow visit where the YouTube DVR scrollback had BETTER audio synchronization than the Synology Surveillance Station "Timeline" hard copy. Both were off a little bit, but YouTube was only off a fraction of a second, whereas the Synology Timeline was off at least a second or more.

Trying (wondering if this may also help issue #23):

• Editing the "Camera - Advanced" setting in Surveillance Station: Setting "Transport Protocol" to "TCP" (default is Auto).
• Note: Cannot change "Keep Alive Method" (default is "Options", and the other option doesn't work).

[tfabris]

The issue of "Synology is desynchronized but YouTube is synched" continues to occur. But YouTube has been pretty good so far recently.

If YouTube is good, then I'm good, so I'm closing this bug for now and I'll reopen it if I see audio desynchronized on YouTube again.

[tfabris]

Reopening: Issue recurred on YouTube stream on May 10th, example here: https://youtu.be/auyhGvpjnU0?t=3985 This was early in the morning, so not terribly long after the camera auto-rebooted.

[tfabris]

This video starts out OK with the audio synchronized, but then the audio is out of synch by 2019-05-19 10:23 am. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynFcxTtbNHY

The video was automatically bounced due to problems after 1pm or so. However that's hours later than this desynchronization issue. So the video bounce detection code is not helping to make sure the audio stays in synch, unfortunately.

[tfabris]

Most of the videos have their time synched just fine, and I can't see a solution for fixing this via a script. Perhaps I just need a better camera. Audio is desynchronized coming into Surveillance Station (surveillance station historical records are desynchronized always, YouTube is desyncrhonized only sometimes). So it's likely just the cheap ass camera. This is likely to be more related to issue #3 than anything else. Closing as "can't fix".

[tfabris]

In an attempt to fix issue #25 (camera rez changes from 1296p to 1080p sometimes) I tried setting things to the following:

• 1296p/25fps/3gbps Reolink Camera settings.
• 1296p/30fps/3gbps Synology IP Camera settings. My idea was that perhaps the Synology IP camera settings were occasionally overriding the Reolink camera settings, and putting them both to 1296p would stop the settings from changing out from under me.

Not sure if that worked in the long term yet. But I believe that this may have caused audio to be more frequently out of sync (issue #14 recurs).

To do: Experiment with setting it to:

• 1080p/25fps/3gbps Reolink Camera settings.
• 1080p/30fps/3gbps Synology IP Camera settings.
• Do a comparison of the actual observed video resolution on the YouTube video stream and see if going down to 1080p from 1296p actually decreases sharpness or not.

[tfabris]

I tried setting everything to 1080p and I have the following conclusions:

• The video sharpness and framing of the final YouTube stream (either live video or archives) is not discernibly different, regardless of whether it is set to 1296p or 1080p at either the Reolink camera settings or the Synology IP Camera settings. YouTube dumbs it down to 1080p in all cases, and it looks the same either way.
• Once upon a time, I seem to recall there was a way for YouTube to at least have the video archive be saved at 1296p, but now that's not happening any more, so YouTube is now 1080p, period. Not sure if that's because YouTube changed or if I'm missing a trick somewhere.
• Reolink camera has a bug where, if you set the camera's settings to 1080p, you get slightly fewer scan lines from the video stream. There is a tiny black strip of a couple of black pixels, at the top and bottom of the screen. Not enough to bother the eye, but enough to trigger the "Check Resolution" error in the YouTube Stream Health. Setting the camera to 1296 takes care of this, but since the camera seems to get itself reset to 1080p so often anyway, perhaps it's not worth my time to try to fix this.
• I am not yet certain if setting everything to 1080p will fix the audio desynchronization issues, but, I am sure that I had more audio desynchronization issues the last couple of days while I had the Synology IP Camera settings at 1296 than I recall having in quite some time prior to that. So I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that setting it to 1080 all around fixes the audio issues.
• My suspicion is that the camera kept getting set back to 1080p because of the Synology IP Camera settings forcing it back to 1080p occasionally. So I hope that if I just give in and leave it always at 1080p, this will fix the issue.

I'm going to close bugs #25 and #14 now, leave everything at 1080p, and we'll reopen these bugs if needed later.

[tfabris]

Some things I have noticed:

• Bouncing the stream, even super briefly (5 sec) fixes the audio issue at least temporarily.
• There is nothing in the YouTube API errors when the audio problem happens.
• The audio problem happens with cam settings at both "TCP" and at "UDP".
• The audio problem happens with cam settings at both 2048 and at 3072.

[tfabris]

Reopening. The new Dahua camera still has an audio desynch issue. Or, more specifically, the audio deaynch issue is not due to the camera, it's got to be a bug in Surveillance Station and/or YouTube.

Ideas:

• The problem might be synology Surveillance station. File a bug report with them?
• See if changing the audio format and/or the audio sample rate fixes the issue? These are options on the new camera.

[tfabris]

Tried:

• Reduce audio sampling frequency (in Dahua camera settings) to 16khz instead of 48khz.

Immediately after changing this setting, it caused the stream to go temporarily offline and made CrowCam.sh bounce the stream. After the stream came back from the bounce, the audio on the YouTube channel was perfectly synchronized.

This might not mean much. I the past, I seem to recall that stream bounces would resynch the audio as well. Live with this a while and see if it stays good.

[tfabris]

Indeed, after changing the setting, even though things had started out fine, video from later that same day was desynchronized. (Note: Checked the video on YouTube the following day, after YouTube was done fully processing the video. Also checked the Surveillance Station recording of the same section, and it was correctly synchronized.)

I'm not the only person experiencing this problem. Here is a message on the Synology community forum with the exact same problem: https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/3/post/125996

[tfabris]

Submitted Synology support ticket number 2464131 .

[tfabris]

Synology sent a list of suggestions with many things to try. In addition to the things they listed, also try:

• Changing the latency/responsiveness settings on the stream. It doesn't let me change the settings when the stream is live, so change them at some point when the stream is down.

[tfabris]

On 2020-02-27, starting at approx 11am-noon ish, I began trying to implement some of the suggestions:

• Disabled unused packages:
  • Cloud Station Server
  • Hyper Backup
  • Hyper Backup Vault
  • Itunes Server
  • Text Editor
  • OAuth Service
  • Download Station
• Checked that upstream bandwidth is sufficient.
  • Currently I have 6mbps available upstream and I have set the camera output to be 2500 kbps.
• Run extended SMART test.
  • Scheduled 2020-02-27 12:02 pm. Expect this to come out OK since these drives have been working well and the quick SMART tests always say they are in perfect health.
• Check firewall/QOS settings on LAN
  • All firewall and QOS settings on my LAN/Routers are disabled.
• Check for LAN problems, the datapath between the Synology and the internet.
  • I can find no faults in the functioning of the local LAN elements. Network, router, and switches are all functioning normally and I don't see any other issues on the network which might indicate a problem.
• Check YouTube's documentation.
  • I can find nothing in the YouTube documentation which addresses or relates to this. They specify the audio format that the video stream will accept (AAC) and that's it.
• Send comparison before/after videos to send to Synology. Find a YouTube video that has a clear desynchronization problem and locate its corresponding file on the Synology hard disk. Send both to Synology. Update: Video sent to Synology for this section of desyncrhonized video: https://bit.ly/2w9sO2Q

Unable to do:

• Check for WAN problems, the datapath between router and YouTube.
  • I don't have any way to control or monitor the portions of my internet connection which are beyond my router. For instance, Comcast Cable is known to be crappy at random times, but I don't have an easy way of measuring or quantifying when/how it's crappy.

Still to do:

• Try changing the latency/responsiveness settings on the YouTube stream. YouTube has a setting for the stream responsiveness, documented here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7444635?hl=en . It doesn't let me change that setting when the stream is live, so I need to try changing it at some point when the stream is down.
• Try different camera data rates. I have already tried 1024, 2048, and 3072 Kbps, the suggestion is to try an even lower setting to see if the desynchronization problem goes away.

[tfabris]

Audio desynchronization repeated on this video: https://youtu.be/tmfEU3HEMY8?t=3078 clearly audible at 2020-02-29 07:31:26 am. Though, since that was occurring this morning and mayyyyyybe youtube wasn't done fully processing the video file, it's worth checking back to see if the problem is fixed later (though note that the video might be deleted after 10 days).

Set the video latency to "Low Latency" (originally it was Normal Latency) on 2020-02-29 at approx 5:54 pm.

[tfabris]

Setting latency to "Low Latency" didn't seem to fix the issue:

Timing correct: https://youtu.be/eq_cx-c7g-Y?t=1531 Timing incorrect (later time point in the same video): https://youtu.be/eq_cx-c7g-Y?t=13417

To do: Try to adjust to the lowest latency setting (there are three of them, try the third setting).

[tfabris]

Switched to Ultra Low Latency on 2020-03-03 at approx 1:04 am. Let's see how that does.

[tfabris]

Timing is off on this video: 2020-03-04 2:50:43pm - https://youtu.be/4FSGaDLZEs4?t=8435 So the Ultra Low Latency did not fix the problem.

New cable modem (comcast-leased Cisco DPC3941T) and new DHCP router (Linksys WRT wrt3200acm) installed on 2020-03-05. Downstream bandwidth has improved, but not upstream (still 6mbps). Let's see how this does.

[tfabris]

Investigate video timing after YouTube is done processing this video: 2020-03-06 3:48:18pm https://youtu.be/LbBQBpTlFZU?t=12068 When watching this one "live", the video was synchronized when early in the video, and desynchronized when late in the video, at the indicated time position. Recheck this video in a day or two, so that we can be sure the sound is still desynchronized after the video has been fully post-processed by YouTube.

If true, then upgrading router and cable modem hardware did not fix the problem.

Update: True. Video is desynchronized, even after YouTube is done post-processing.

[tfabris]

To do:

• Get DD-WRT installed on my local LAN router and use it to monitor detailed traffic usage. See if the incidents of audio desynchronization on the video stream coincide with traffic spikes on the local LAN.

[tfabris]

I haven't seen a recurrence of the problem in the last three days (Edit: it took about 5 days for it to recur). Here are the things I have done in that time. Keep in mind that the problem was always intermittent for me, so these things might have nothing to do with it; perhaps the problem will still recur soon... we shall see. For example, maybe Comcast has been improving their service and fixing problems recently, due to increased customer usage, due to Covid-19, and maybe that is the reason it's been good for the last few days.

• I have installed a new cable modem on my Comcast line: Netgear model CM1150V. This is the most "modern" cable modem I could find in Comcast's "supported modems" list which also supported VOIP telephony (a feature I needed).

• Nightly reboot the Dahua camera (Setting is under "System/Auto Maintain" in Dahua configuration page)

• Nightly reboot the Synology NAS (Setting is in DSM under "Control Panel/Hardware and Power/Power Schedule": Set a daily shutdown time, and also a daily startup time one minute later)

• Nightly reboot the LAN/Wifi Router (Not all Wifi routers have this capability, I'm using DD-WRT, so the setting is under Administration/Keep Alive in that software).

• Nightly reboot the Cable Modem (Via a shell script which is launched on a schedule from the Synology Task Scheduler, script code is here: https://github.com/tfabris/RebootCableModem  I make sure not to do it at the same time as the NAS reboot of course)

Update: None of these things fixed the problem, see below.

[tfabris]

To do:

• Check video for 2020-03-30 3:28:30 pm. Sound appears to be out of sync during cached live playback. See if it's still out of sync after the video is saved and processed by YouTube.

• Install YaMon ( http://usage-monitoring.com/v4Install+Validate.php ) onto DD-WRT for long term monitoring of the router usage. See if there are data spikes during times when the issue recurs.

[tfabris]

• Audio is indeed out of sync on the video mentioned above: https://bit.ly/3bDhgEu
• The audio desynchronization begins to occur approximately 1 hour after the midday stream bounce. There is no activity nor errors recorded by the CrowCam controller during this time, everything looks fine.
• The stream with the audio desynchronization also gets the zoomy fast problem from issue #31 about 90 minutes later, which gets corrected by the script via a short stream bounce.
• YaMon installed on 2020-03-31, we will see if it gives us any information about usage during any desynchronization times. The data in YaMon is questionable, due to https://github.com/al-caughey/YAMon-v4/issues/7

[tfabris]

Trying suggestion from Synology:

• Configure camera (in Synology settings, IP Camera - Edit - Optimization - General) to use Surveillance Station as the NTP (network time protocol) server.
• This will, via the camera driver, cause the camera's NTP server settings to change to the Synology address on the LAN.
• This was implemented on 2020-04-06 10:10 am.

To do:

• Observe if the NTP changes fixed the issue and report back.

[tfabris]

The audio desynchronization issue recurred on 2020-04-06, several hours after I implemented the suggested NTP change. The issue was clearly noticeable at 4:56:23 pm (squirrel lands on feeder and you hear the sound of him landing on the feeder before he does it on video).

On this stream, I have traced it down to the exact second that the problem occurs. It occurs at 04:55:25 pm. You can see it happen if you watch the "seconds" of the time counter on the screen. There is a glitch in the video where the video freezes for a couple of seconds at that time, while the sound continues. After the glitch, the video and audio are desynchronized, but you might not be able to notice the issue until 4:56:23 pm when the squirrel jumps back onto the roof of the feeder.

Links to time points in the video stream:

• Good audio/video sync at 4:44:33 pm: https://bit.ly/2RkE2cJ
• Problem occurs at 04:55:25 pm: https://bit.ly/2xb91kr
• Bad audio/video sync at 4:56:23 pm: https://bit.ly/2RjGxf0

I have looked at my router's DD-WRT YaMon hourly data usage on the network during that time period, and there is no unusual data usage during that period of time. No data spikes in the hourly report for the 4pm hour. There is a large file download which occurs during the 5pm hour on that afternoon, but the desynchronization issue occurred before that download had started.

I have checked the Synology NAS logs during that time period and there are no log entries for that time, nothing is expected to have gone wrong during that period.

The other user on the Synology forum who is experiencing the same problem has reported that his camera NTP settings were already set to point to the Synology, and it did not fix the issue for him: https://bit.ly/39OenPP

The other user on that Synology forum says that he has already ruled out all other networking problems, because he has no audio issues if he streams the video directly from the camera to YouTube using built-in software on the camera. He only has the problem when the Synology software is used to stream the video to YouTube.

So this must be a bug in Synology surveillance station software which streams the video. Synology must be doing something to the rtmp stream, which intermittently causes problems with the video/audio data stream.

[tfabris]

Interesting: Changing the camera NTP settings, though they didn't fix the audio problem, has revealed a new bug in the Synology NTP server software.

After I set the Surveillance station configuration to use the Synology as its NTP server, the camera's timestamp (the time that is baked into the video feed) occasionally displays an incorrect time. The minutes are correct but the hours are 7 hours off. I can only assume that the timezone, as supplied by the Synology NTP server, is flipping back and forth. The camera will occasionally go to the wrong time stamp and then later go back to the correct time stamp.

Here is an example. At 8:15:42 am, the camera flips to display an incorrect time of "1:15:42" am: https://bit.ly/2VfDKVk At 8:35:42 am, the camera flips back to displaying the correct time: https://bit.ly/2Rk6o6U

This issue never occurred before I had changed the setting, so that proves this is a Synology bug, not a camera bug.

I am now (2020-04-08 11:21am PDT) resetting the camera back to its original NTP configuration (pool.ntp.org) so that this issue no longer occurs.

[tfabris]

Synology support worked on it remotely and installed a patch that was supposed to resynchronize the audio at intervals (not sure what, exactly, I didn't get details). They did this apparently on 2020-03-13 at approximately 3am ish (Seems that it was across the 3:30am reboot boundary, they had to re-log-in, sorry guys), so investigate if the problem resolved itself after this date/time. They do not expect that it has resolved itself, they say that they think the problem remains after the patch.

To check this, I need YouTube to be working OK. At the moment, I'm getting a lot of spotty performance off of YouTube in terms of downloading and viewing video. I think that uploaded stream video is still working as expected but I'm not certain.

Initial investigation seems to indicate that, indeed, the problem still remains. This is the video from that morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYPck6YYtHw and initial looks indicate the problem is still there. Note: I double checked it later, after YouTube has had a a few hours to fully process the video file, sometimes there's still processing in-progress if I view the archived video too soon after the stream has ended. It still had the problem.

[tfabris]

Synology says they thought the issue should be resolved, but the issue recurs at these time points today:

2020-04-20 9:46 am Squirrel: https://youtu.be/IRL6q-792rc?t=13870 At 10:01 am squirrel still seems synched

Desynch happens some time during this hour but there are no animals on screen to check sync.

2020-04-20 11:03:01 am Steller's Jay (audio desynchronized) : https://youtu.be/IRL6q-792rc?t=18465 2020-04-20 11:18:05 am Crow (audio desynchronized): https://youtu.be/IRL6q-792rc?t=19374

2020-04-20 11:34:51 am on the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRL6q-792rc&feature=youtu.be&t=20377 2020-04-20 11:54:00 am on the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRL6q-792rc&feature=youtu.be&t=21531 2020-04-20 12:32:44 pm on the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRL6q-792rc&feature=youtu.be&t=23852 2020-04-20 12:33:11 pm on the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRL6q-792rc&feature=youtu.be&t=23882

[tfabris]

Issue continues to occur. Here is issue occurring all morning, while a Synology support tech was logged in:

Issue occurring already, at the start of the stream, first thing in the morning, shortly after the stream went live: 2020-04-21 6:01:39 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=388

Then: 2020-04-21 7:23:09 am - Login from Synology support is registered in the Synology log.

Issue is still audible a few minutes, and hours, later: 2020-04-21 7:28:26 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=5594 2020-04-21 7:42:12 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=6425 2020-04-21 7:50:14 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=6902 2020-04-21 9:01:17 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=11158 2020-04-21 9:50:35 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=14127 2020-04-21 10:50:34 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=17726 2020-04-21 10:51:34 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=17786 2020-04-21 10:57:33 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=18136 2020-04-21 10:57:54 am - https://youtu.be/SoCew4k-2No?t=18166

There were no crowcam script errors in the Synology log except for a brief "500" error in the YouTube API at 7:52 am, though I see no problems or hiccups in the video feed during that time (apart from the desynchronization).

The entire stream stayed this way (desynchronized) until the midday stream bounce occurred, and then it was fixed after that bounce: https://youtu.be/beC_4jAxlOg?t=1735

[tfabris]

More updates: Synology says more work was done, an additional patch was applied, and to check it. They said that the "camera responded to Surveillance Station in ways that did not line up with the camera profile that it was configured to use. Based on their testing, they tried changing the camera profile from how it had been configured to the model of camera it appeared to be behaving as - in this case, from IPC-HDBW5831R-ZE to IPC-HDW5830R-Z" and wanted to be sure that I had the model number right. The camera was bought from https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077QTWQ7G/ and it says it's a white label OEM model so I can't be 100 percent sure it's not just the lesser camera. The camera's internal web page does not show the camera model number on the screen, so I don't know. However, I'm certain it's not a IPC-HDW5830R-Z because I looked up a picture of one of those on the web and it looks physically different.

Syno Logins registered at: 2020-04-22 19:22:36 2020-04-23 03:28:42 2020-04-23 03:29:30 2020-04-23 03:57:56 2020-04-23 03:58:17 2020-04-23 04:53:18 2020-04-23 04:54:19

• Note: During the day on 2020-04-23 I noticed that the camera had been reconfigured to 1-FPS and a lower screen resolution, apparently the people did that while fskng with the camera settings. I set it back to original.

Syno login registered at: 2020-04-23 21:09:03

Problem recurred in this stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4FS1AQIIic 2020-04-24 05:54:37 am - Two crows, audio is working correctly: https://bit.ly/2VCDi5c 2020-04-24 06:06:06 am - Timestamp on video skips a little bit, possible start of audio desynchronization problem: https://bit.ly/2KF3lCc 2020-04-24 06:06:06 am - Crowcam Cleanup logs that it performed a deletion of an old video from YouTube. 2020-04-24 06:28:57 am - Squirrel - audio may be desynchronized, but hard to tell: https://bit.ly/2KGYZKR 2020-04-24 06:40:21 am - Squirfuffle - audio definitely desynchronized: https://bit.ly/3bFwqcX 2020-04-24 07:58:19 am - Two crows - audio definitely desynchronized: https://bit.ly/3aEutvO

[tfabris]

Current status:

Issue still occurring on Sunday morning , example: 2020-04-26 07:17:10 am - https://youtu.be/Q8JeFcXoC2I?t=5523

Logins from syno techs on that Sunday night at: 2020-04-26 19:22:11 2020-04-27 01:26:10 2020-04-27 02:51:06

Noticed that there had been changes to configuration of camera on Monday 04-27 during the day:

• Video quality seemed reduced, though nothing I can quantify precisely.
• Video stream bandwidth setting got reduced from constant 2500 Kbps to constant 2048 Kbps.
• Audio stream format was changed from AAC to G711 in Synology Surveillance Station configuration screen.
• In the camera's web UI, the audio stream format now appears as G.711A with a 16000 sampling frequency.
• I am not certain if the changes to the audio and video stream format had been made on the Sunday night 04-27 listed above or not. Changes might have been made at another time and I just hadn't noticed it. However I did not make the changes, so Synology techs definitely made them, the only question is exactly when.

Audio is working correctly at this time point: 2020-04-27 6:12:04 am: https://youtu.be/fwnG3b9ocBg?t=1615

Audio is desynchronized at these time points: 2020-04-27 6:22:00 am: https://youtu.be/fwnG3b9ocBg?t=2212 2020-04-27 6:29:54 am: https://youtu.be/fwnG3b9ocBg?t=2684 2020-04-27 07:23:08 am: https://youtu.be/fwnG3b9ocBg?t=5879 2020-04-27 07:27:25 am:https://youtu.be/fwnG3b9ocBg?t=6135

Audio has a dropout at this time point, audio is silent for a moment, but audio is still desynchronized after the dropout: 2020-04-27 07:45:08 am: https://youtu.be/fwnG3b9ocBg?t=7201

[tfabris]

Status:

2020-04-30 00:19:14 am - Synology tech login. 2020-04-30 00:22:01 am - Synology reportedly "applied a new patch to Surveillance Station that should lower the frequency of the video stream restarting, and ideally should reduce the impact this has on the video stream"

Issue recurred the following morning:

2020-04-30 05:44:40 am - Crows, sound is synchronized correctly: https://youtu.be/YB7LeVDlvrM?t=268 2020-04-30 05:46:22 am - Crow, sound is synchronized correctly: https://youtu.be/YB7LeVDlvrM?t=370

Sound becomes desynchronized somewhere between 5:46 am and 6:07 am.

2020-04-30 06:07:37 am - Squirrel, sound is desynchronized (though hard to tell unless you know exactly what to listen for): https://youtu.be/YB7LeVDlvrM?t=1647 2020-04-30 06:32:28 am - Squirrel, sound is desynchronized: https://youtu.be/YB7LeVDlvrM?t=3139 2020-04-30 06:47:24 am - Squirrel, sound is desynchronized: https://youtu.be/YB7LeVDlvrM?t=4033

[tfabris]

Most recent logins by Syno techs:

• 2020-05-05 00:27:34 AM
• 2020-05-05 05:23:21 AM

Audio desynchronizations noticed:

• 2020-05-08 08:18:35 am - Crow. Sound is desynchronized by a lot, but you have to know exactly what to listen for because it's very quiet (listen for claw scrapes on the plastic, they come very early): https://youtu.be/tthVWR5lW1U?t=10703
• 2020-05-08 09:27:39 am - Squirrel and crow trade places - Sound is desynchronized by at least a couple of seconds, it's pretty obvious at this time point and also very noticeable when the crow departs: https://youtu.be/tthVWR5lW1U?t=14847
• 2020-05-09 07:54:06 am - Jay. Sound is desynchronized but only by a barely-noticeable fraction of a second: https://youtu.be/y2KoGNfAAss?t=25301

[tfabris]

Desynchronization issue still occurs. Most recent logins by Syno techs is still this: 2020-05-05 00:27:34 AM 2020-05-05 05:23:21 AM

Example of recent desynchronization: 2020-05-17 06:24:23 pm: https://bit.ly/3gaTrH5

[tfabris]

Rechecked the support thread, and actually on 2020-05-05 I had missed a message. They have supplied me with information on a version of the FFMpeg binary that I can use on the Synology to stream directly to YouTube via FFMpeg instead of through the "Live Broadcast" feature of Surveillance Station. This is complicated but theoretically do-able. I've made local notes on how to do it, so I can start working on the code to try it.

[tfabris]

Current status:

• Audio still becomes desynchronized by a couple of seconds. This happens intermittently. It usually happens a couple hours after the start of the stream. The youtube stream plays the audio first, then a couple of seconds later, the video plays the thing that you just heard happen in the audio.
• Synology tech support has tried several times to fix the issue by directly logging into the Synology and changing camera settings and/or replacing system files. So far this has not fixed the issue.
• I'm experimenting with using ffmpeg (skipping the Synology Surveillance Station Live Broadcast feature altogether) but that's causing a host of separate audio problems all its own.
• Still investigating the ffmpeg path, and I have been doing some initial preparation in the CrowCam source code so that I could more easily switch between "Live Broadcast" and ffmpeg if I wanted to.