Error when recording f4v-files: Error from libmp4.so: No Space left in the stsd box.

Question

We are recording live streams on a Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5.3 r824. In general, everything works fine, so there are no appliaction-issues. But sometimes (it is not reproducable yet) a stream stops recording without any notice or event in the application. All we can find is such a message in our core.log:
2010-03-05 03:30:00 4747 (e)2611178 Error from libmp4.so: No Space left in the stsd box. -
2010-03-05 03:30:00 4747 (e)2611423 Failed to record [...]16891_14351_RGtBCODxPR4cM8QfML9CuxqhHqutMwWX.f4v (Unknown Error). -
Can anyone give me a hint, where i could start searching for the cause of this error?
These streams are in general sent by Adobe Media Live Encoder.
Thanks in advance
Suha

Answer 1

You're running out of sample description spaces in your recording of an F4V - this is presumably because you're splicing together different H264 encodings or other types of media.  No matter, you can configure this value up from it's default of 10 - check out Server.xml in your configs and you'll find this section
<Recording>
                    <!-- Maximum ELST entries in a recording.  ELST entries are used when there     -->
                    <!-- are gaps in a kind of content.  Gaps occur during an append to the file    -->
                    <!-- or when content like video ends while other content proceeds.  If more    -->
                    <!-- gaps or appends occur than configured here, recording would terminate    -->
                    <!-- Making this value too high takes up unnecessary space in each recorded file-->
                    <!-- Default value is 100                            -->
                    <MaxELSTEntries>100</MaxELSTEntries>
                    <!-- Each change in codec for a content type, like two different video codecs    -->
                    <!-- takes a sample description.  All space for sample descriptions is made on    -->
                    <!-- file creation.  If codec type changes more than descriptions available    -->
                    <!-- recording will terminate.  Adding too many descriptions takes unnecessary    -->
                    <!-- space for every file record.  Default is 10 for each type            -->
                    <MaxDataSampleDescriptions>10</MaxDataSampleDescriptions>
                    <MaxAudioSampleDescriptions>10</MaxAudioSampleDescriptions>
                    <MaxVideoSampleDescriptions>10</MaxVideoSampleDescriptions>
                </Recording>
You'll want to increase the appropriate SampleDescription Max.  Not sure which it is yet (audio/video/data) but in theory you can increase any or all as needed.  These boxes are set in size when you start your recording so all recordings will bloat very slightly to cover this case that most users don't run into, but feel free to set the SampleDescription limits higher and you should stop seeing this.